


Within Strength Lies Peril

by tonysbruce



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 48,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonysbruce/pseuds/tonysbruce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A familiar adversary takes Tony, hoping it'll help his plan to drive the Avengers apart. But when the grand scheme of things comes together, the cuts are much deeper than they seem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Yay new chapterfic. I don't own any of the characters and all that jazz, you know. I hope you guys like this, cause I'm slightly nervous about posting things here. Don't bite me. xD

"Blueberry?"

Bruce looked up to find an outstretched arm, a silver pouch in hand, only inches in front of his face. He didn't know what time it was – knowing him, probably somewhere around midnight, maybe later, but knowing Tony, probably more like four in the morning. His eyes were groggy as he looked at Tony, and seeing the bag of food in his hands, he finally noticed the soft grumbling in his stomach.

"Come on, Banner. Brain food." Tony's lips curved into his signature cocky smile. Sighing to himself, Bruce dug his hand into the back and pulled back a few berries, popping them into his mouth one by one.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" He finally glanced at the little digital numbers in the corner of his computer screen, realizing that it was 4:47 AM. "Aren't you usually, like… sleeping, or drinking or something?"

"Nugatory." Tony leaned his head back and poured a stifling amount of berries into his mouth, and his attempt to speak around the food make Bruce simply shake his head. "Sleep is for the weak. Besides, you're more interesting than sleep or alcohol. What are you working on, anyway?" After swallowing the berries, he stepped behind the table beside Bruce and squinted at the screen.

Bruce made an unneeded gesture towards the programs running on the screen. "When the Chitauri fell around Manhattan after you put the nuke in space, S.H.I.E.L.D took a few of them into custody for investigation. I was just, uh… looking at what they've gathered about them."

"And?"

"Nothing to go on, really. The technology of wherever Loki and his army came from is far too advanced and… unearthly for us to try and determine anything plausible –" He stopped talking when he felt Tony's hand slide around his waist, and a ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. "- honestly, they have more worthwhile things to do with their time."

"So do you." Tony's breath was warm on his ear, and Bruce felt a shudder run down his spine. Both of the hands on Bruce's waist seemed to burn through the fabric of his shirt, and he found himself leaning into Tony's arms, relishing the warmth that enveloped him. Then there were lips at his neck, beneath his ear, sliding downwards until they reached the soft skin stretched over his collar bones.

"Tony." Bruce could barely hear his own voice, and when Tony didn't respond with even the slightest of grunts, he questioned if he had even spoken at all. "Tony, I'm working." Despite the fact that he was telling his lover to stop, he couldn't help but smile thankfully. He felt like it'd been much too long, even though they'd made love only a few nights before.

Finally, nibbling at Bruce's ear, Tony grunted in response. "It's five in the morning; I think you deserve a break. Just a quick one."

Bruce sighed. "Not… not now, someone might find us. You know Steve; he's always up bright and early."

"Please." Tony rolled his eyes. "You're really going to bring that up again?" When Bruce simply looked at him over his shoulder and said nothing, Tony added, "Who cares if the team finds out. They're going to have to know sometime."

"I know." Bruce said the words with a sort of wariness in his voice, gently tracing the bones of Tony's hand with the tip of his finger. There was something about Tony's hands that he found comforting, something about the way they felt on his skin and the way the skin tightened over the bones as the arms tightened around his waist, squeezing, holding him as if he'd never let go if he didn't have to.

"Look." The arms dropped from Bruce's waist as Tony hopped up to sit on the table, but took a hold of Bruce's forearms and dragged him towards him so the man was standing between his legs. "Other people's opinions – or actions, for that matter – aren't going to stop me from doing what I want with you."

Bruce couldn't help but chuckle softly at the comment. "Oh, I'm aware."

"Exactly." Tony grinned and cocked his eyebrow. "So, please? Just a quick one? You know you want to." Before Bruce could respond, his lips were otherwise occupied by Tony's and he felt the other's legs squeezing his waist. He leaned into the embrace, and at that point he didn't care about the images on the computer screen or the time or, most importantly, anyone finding them in the lab, because right then and there, Tony's lips on his, trapped in the sensual embrace, Bruce simply didn't care.

# #

The light was blinding. It may have just been the sunlight filtering through the endless glass walls, but for some reason in the back of his mind, Bruce didn't believe that. It was almost too bright, like some sort of artificial lighting meant to wake him. Tony could be obnoxious, always up at the crack of dawn, and Bruce knew that – but it was unlike him to intentionally wake Bruce with some sort of blinding spectacle unless absolutely necessary. Neither of them ever left the bed until the other woke; it was their unofficial rule. He sat up in the tousled bed sheets and pushed his dark curls out of his eyes, feeling a wall of cool air rush against his bare chest.

He looked towards his right where Tony had fallen asleep after their early morning escapades, but found that the space was empty. He froze.

Tony never left the bed.

_Oh, shit._

Frantically, Bruce scrambled from the bed and pulled on the nearest pair of pants he could find, feeling his heart rate begin to increase. As he made his way through that particular floor of the tower, he listened for any sign of Tony's presence – the coffee maker gurgling, the digital blips of a computer, even JARVIS' accented, disembodied voice, but as he continued through the doorways and pristine hallways, he found nothing.

Bruce rounded a corner and breathed a short sigh of relief when he saw a man's shadow looming from inside the bar area. Found him.

"Tony?" His voice was tentative, shaky. "What are you – " He didn't have a chance to finish his sentence before a blast of something was thrown across the room and hit him square in the chest, sending him flying backwards across the room until a wall broke against his back.

Bleary-eyed and clothed in dust, Bruce felt a snarl form in his throat. There was blood on his back and he thought he finally saw Tony's body across the distance, but the thoughts swimming in his mind were somewhere between _nonono not now don't let this happen_ and _greenrageanger blood boiling get Tony._

When he got to his feet, there was still dust in the air and he felt his muscles tense, stretch, and eventually grow, and he dreaded the moment when his skin would finally turn green and the greater majority of Bruce Banner would be lost somewhere inside the beast. Every time during this… transformation, he put his every thought and effort into repressing it, shoving it back and locking it inside a safe and throwing out the key, but each time that moment came too soon when his mind became useless and he couldn't, just couldn't fight it any longer.

He never quite knew when exactly the change from man to beast was complete, but when another blast lit the room, it bounced off of his hard, green chest, earning a screech in return. Bruce (was he still Bruce? He wasn't quite sure – he knew the Other Guy was somewhat of a manifestation of himself, though a beastly one, and he liked to believe that somewhere, Bruce Banner was still in there) advanced towards the – person? Creature? Imposter? – and balled his hand into a fist, but before he brought it down, he caught a glimpse of Tony's gaze in the corner of his eye.

Everything stopped for a moment, and he held Tony's face in his eyes for a moment, noticing the small trail of blood that dripped down the side of his head, the beads of sweat that clung to his forehead and the soft stubble of his goatee. Something about his expression screamed 'help me', and Bruce found himself motionless, having never seen anything of the sort on his paramour's face. Just as he was about to reach out and grab the man from whatever grip he was held in, something hit him in the side of the head and he roared irritably.

There were then words floating through the air, dancing around his head, but only three made their way to the small part of his brain that was comprehensible.

"Dull, manic creature."

Then Tony was gone, dust and bits of drywall crumbling into the space where he'd been before, and Bruce felt a howl rip from his throat. Not a howl of rage, but another one that he knew almost just as well – pain.


	2. Chapter Two

When Bruce finally came to, his back naked and sore against the cool floor, he found that he'd almost forgotten what had happened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, noticing his lack of attire, and immediately the events of the morning came crashing down upon him in a wave of horror.

Tony was gone.

At least, Bruce _thought_ he was gone – but judging by the fact that he was alone on this floor of the Stark Tower, the walls and floors around him were in ruins, and his secret-significant-other was nowhere in sight, Tony was most likely, as much as he hated to say it, _gone._

His mind was so far gone in the daze of what had happened that Bruce barely noticed someone entering the room. The footsteps stopped somewhere behind him, and Steve's usually strong voice was soft.

"Dr. Banner?" Steve said cautiously. "What's going on here? And where are your clothes?"

"I, uh," Bruce stammered, fishing for words. "There was… an incident. Can you, um, give me a moment?" He didn't bother to wait for the soldier's reply before he hastily shuffled into the other room and threw on the nearest clothes he could find, taking a moment to frustratedly twist his fingers into his hair. Normally, the fact that the bed sheets were thrown around in a way that could only suggest that the two were caught in an embrace that was more than friendly would have been itching in the front of Bruce's mind, but somewhere he knew that a) Steve was probably the least likely to question it, and b) the state of Tony's bedroom was the least of anyone's worries.

Footsteps approached behind him, and Bruce spun on his heel to meet Steve in the doorway, stopping abruptly only inches from the blonde man's face. "Dr. Banner," Steve said again, his voice low. "Tell me what's going on."

Bruce scratched the back of his head for a second before he stifled a sigh. "Tony, um… he's not here."

"Well, where is he?"

"That's the thing. I don't actually know. He's just… gone."

Steve's brow furrowed and he stole a glance over his shoulder at the mess of the room behind him. Well, clearly Bruce wasn't lying, and it certainly didn't look like Tony had just got up and walked out by the state of his kitchen. "We should tell Director Fury, then," he finally said, turning back to Bruce, who still looked more flustered than he'd ever seen the man.

Bruce nodded. "Yeah. Let's do that." Steve turned towards the exit, stepping over and wading through the debris. There was an itch in the back of his mind, an itch that told him something was seriously weird here, but he elected to ignore it. It looked like one of Tony's experiments gone wrong, because as he was well aware, Tony and Bruce were often up to ridiculous scientific antics in the wee hours of the morning – and not all of them always went completely smoothly. However, he'd never seen Bruce quite like this, and that made the itch come back again.

He decided to simply not think too far into it, and hope that Fury and the rest of the team would have some reasonable two-cents to put into the situation.

**# #**

"So you're telling me that Mr. Stark just _disappeared?_ " Fury leaned over the table, pressing the palms of his hands on its surface. Bruce couldn't tell if the glint in the man's one eye was a glint of anger, worry, or disappointment, but knowing Director Nick Fury, it was probably somewhere close to extremely-pissed-off.

"Yes, sir, that's what it looks like," Steve replied. The other five seated around the table were deadly quiet, which was unusual for these types of meetings, and it seemed as if without Tony's usual snarky sort of enthusiasm, everything suddenly became a few shades darker, duller.

"I need more information than that, Captain Rogers." Fury paused and straightened. "Who was present when Stark disappeared?"

"I was." When nobody responded to his reply, Bruce realized that his voice was too low for even himself to hear. He cleared his throat and repeated, "I was present, sir."

There was a faint murmur among a few of the others, and Clint turned to look at Bruce. "What were you doing at Tony's house that early?" he asked, his voice almost incredulous.

"We were working." Bruce's voice was flat, but in the back of his mind, he knew that wasn't _completely_ true. "And besides, Stark Tower is my… temporary home for now."

"Then it sounds like it was just one of your experiments gone wrong," Natasha said this with a slight roll of her eyes. "You know how these things always go. Stark does something stupid, we get worried, and then he comes back like nothing happened. It's typical."

"That's…" Sighing, Bruce leaned forward with his elbows on the table, pressing his forehead into the palm of his hand. He could feel the four pairs of eyes (Thor was back in his own realm for the time being) on the sides of his face, but he stayed in that position anyway. "That's not what happened."

"Well then, Dr. Banner, why don't you tell us what _did_ happen?" Great, Fury was annoyed.

"Because I'm not entirely sure." Before anyone could mumble or murmur or interrupt him again, Bruce looked up and continued. "I woke up and didn't know where he was. So I went into the kitchen and thought I saw him, and there was someone else there instead –before you ask, no, I didn't see who that was, either – and then something hit me and the… Other Guy came out. I thought I saw Tony before whatever it was took him away, and that was it."

"What hit you?" Steve inquired.

"I don't know. A beam of some sort. It looked blue in colour but I didn't get a good look at it before…" Bruce trailed off and made a slight gesture with his hand. They knew what he was trying to imply.

"Gee," Clint scoffed, "blue beam? That sounds awfully familiar."

Steve looked at him, an air of confusion in his expression. "In what way?"

"Loki." Clint shrugged casually. "He had the scepter thing that shot the blue rays, remember?"

"Loki has no business with neither The Avengers nor S.H.I.E.L.D," Fury put in, silencing any of the others who looked as if they were about to speak. "The Asgardians have the Tesseract. He has no quarrel with us."

Bruce finally sat back in his chair and glanced at the director. Part of his mind wanted to believe Fury, because the logical, rational side of Banner knew that the reasoning was probably right – perhaps it was just one of Tony's experiments. One that had gone horribly wrong, because things weren't always meant to go perfectly, right?

But then the other half of him said no, it wasn't just an experiment. When he'd seen through the Hulk's eyes that look of pure shock and pain and desperation on Tony's face, he knew it wasn't anything the man had brought upon himself. It was something bigger, something serious. Something horrifyingly murderous.

_Something as dangerous as, if not more than, the Hulk itself._

For a second, Bruce closed his eyes and shook that thought out of his head. The Hulk had nothing to do with this. The Hulk shouldn't, and _wouldn't_ , have anything to do with this.

"Isn't that what you said about Loki last time?" Natasha pointed out, stifling a slightly exasperated sigh.

For once, Fury didn't have an immediate reply. He simply turned his head towards the window and clasped his hands behind his back, inhaling deeply through his nose. "Sometimes, Agent Romanoff," he began, "sometimes, strength is underestimated because of what lies behind it."

**# #**

Pain. There was pain. He couldn't quite tell if it was the screaming, searing pain that shot through your body in waves, crinkling your spine and clenching your muscles until you just couldn't take it anymore, or the kind of pain that sat in the back of your head, dull, aching, laughing mercilessly as its host tried to wager with its power.

Tony was almost afraid to open his eyes, but when he did, he found that the environment hadn't changed much. It was still dark, damp, and cold, and the only sound he heard was that of his own shaky breaths coming in and out of his lungs like a broken metronome.

The damp cement was cool under his back, and for a second Tony chose to relish that, because he could still somewhat feel the blood sliding down his skin from the many cuts and scratches he'd received from he-didn't-even-know-what. He put a palm to his forehead and felt another cut there, and though it stung from the dirt on his hand, he kept it there anyway. _What the hell happened?_

"So he's awakened." Tony jumped at the sudden voice that came from his left. "I didn't suspect it would take so long." That voice sounded awfully familiar.

"Well, you know," Tony replied, his voice barely above a low, fatigued rasp. "I needed my daily beauty sleep."

The owner of the voice chuckled softly. "I'm afraid you won't be getting much of that well-needed rest." There was a shuffle when the man stood up, and Tony removed his hand from his forehead to look towards where the movement came from. For a second he saw nothing but black, but when he squinted, he could make out a hint of a soft blue light – one that wasn't from the device in his chest. _Ah, shit._

"If that's the case, then how about we just get all this over with so I can go home?" Not only was Tony tired as hell, but now he was just rather irritated.

"Is that what you call it? Home?" The blue glow ceased movement somewhere in front of where Tony sat. He could almost feel the insidious smile spreading across his captor's face. "That is not where you belong, Man of Iron; that serves as nothing but a sham, a shadow to mask what you truly crave. That place, those people, the _Avengers,"_ the word was spat with disgust, "they rule you. They control you, but they do not _own_ you. You've been subjugated, compromised. Is that what you want? Is that what lies in your heart?"

"Shrapnel lies in my heart," Tony replied, still equipped with his usual snark. At that point, he was about ninety-nine percent sure of who the other man was, but decided to continue to hear him out – after all, he _did_ enjoy listening to people try to persuade him, and make a fool of themselves while doing so. _Except for Bruce,_ he suddenly thought, _Bruce doesn't._

"I don't have time for your games," the voice spat venomously. "You greatly underestimate your power, Mr. Stark, it's criminal. It's sinful, how you so savagely exploit your assets."

At that point, Tony didn't quite know what to say. Very rarely was he struck speechless, and he wasn't sure how or why this person had the power to do so, but he continued to stay silent, almost willing to hear what else the man had to offer.

Almost as if he wished to be undone.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. So. New chapter. I said I would try to keep an update schedule for this, but it seems as though that mission was not a success. I'm sorry. But regardless, I sincerely hope you all enjoy it.

It'd only been three days.

Three days since that morning, since the master kitchen in Stark Tower had crumbled to pieces; three days since the Other Guy had paid a visit, and three painstakingly long and dreadful days since Tony Stark had made his rather mysterious departure.

Those days had been spent scouring the place for evidence, tirelessly investigating and tracking whatever had taken the man of iron – at least that's what _most_ of the team was doing, and through Bruce was included in said team, he'd probably made the least progress. He refused to work in the lab he often shared with Tony, and though he claimed it was for scientific reasons for the investigation, he really just didn't want to face what would hit him if he walked into that room.

Yes, it'd only been three days, and Bruce's devastation had done nothing but fester miserably, trapped in an indestructible jar in the front of his mind, one that he couldn't just take out and dust off in fear that somebody else would stumble upon it.

The room was eerily quiet for most of the day, apart from the occasional blip of a computer or the soft scrape of a ballpoint pen against paper, and Bruce couldn't decide if he liked it that way. Silence had always been a comfort to him in the years since the first incident, and after a while he found that noise made him both physically and mentally uncomfortable. However, after he'd bashfully accepted Tony's invitation to live at the tower, complete silence was foreign. When they worked, there was often the low hum of Tony's voice as he talked himself through what he was doing, or sometimes even the sound of the distorted guitar of an AC/DC album drifting through the speakers – but now that those things were absent, he found himself becoming jittery in the noiseless area, thinking he was hearing things when they were actually nowhere to be found.

"Find anything useful yet?" Bruce started at the sudden voice in the doorway, and looked up to see Clint entering the room. When Clint noticed Bruce's somewhat flustered expression, he added, "Fury wanted me to check up over here. See if you got any leads."

Bruce set down his pen and swiped his hand across the computer screen, bringing up some sort of diagram that he know fully well Clint probably wouldn't understand. "The radiation waves present in the kitchen are almost an exact match for the waves released from Loki's scepter six months ago," he responded dryly, staring at the chart with a tidbit of horror behind his eyes.

"Called it." Clint hoisted himself up onto a table, settling his gaze on anything that wasn't Bruce in front of him. As much as he tried to hide and as good as he was, the man was obviously flustered and worried, and Clint figured he'd do as best he could to keep Bruce from getting any more uncomfortable with the situation than he already was. "I knew we weren't done with that guy."

"It's not confirmed yet," Bruce murmured, more to himself than the other. "But I was thinking that as well." He too made an effort to avoid the other's gaze, and the whole ambiance of the room was rather awkward.

Clint knew that it was probably a good time to leave and let Dr. Banner do his work alone, because after all, Fury had only sent him to check in, not sit down and have a full-on conversation with the guy. However it was fairly obvious that even if he tried, Bruce wouldn't talk. He could poke, prod, and pry, and the doctor would remain next to silent, and that stuck Clint odd. Dr. Banner wasn't the most social of the group, but it seemed that for the past few days, he was even less so. There was a thought in the back of Clint's mind that Tony's disappearance had struck Bruce the hardest; that was plain and clear. It hit them all pretty hard, really, but watching Bruce help investigate the problem was almost painful.

A question was itching in the back of Clint's brain, a question he'd honestly had for a while, but never had the guts to ask. And now was certainly not the time to ask it, so instead he initiated a conversation with five simple words, "You miss him, don't you?"

When Bruce didn't respond within the first ten seconds after the question, Clint realized that it was probably a stupid thing to ask. As strange as it was to admit, they _all_ missed Tony – even Steve, who often spent a plethora of time complaining about the billionaire.

Finally, Bruce stole a quick glance at Clint over his glasses, and then looked back towards the computer again. "Yeah." His answer was simple, dry – and surprisingly more nonchalant than any of the others had been.

"It's pretty quiet around here without him," Clint replied, sliding off of the table he was sitting on. "If the circumstances weren't so grim, maybe it would be refreshing." His mouth lifted into a half-smile, hoping it would lighten the mood a bit.

It didn't, because Bruce's face was still somewhat blank, though Clint could have sworn he saw a pang of pain in the doctor's eyes.

**# #**

It wasn't a surprise that the day had passed slowly. The time was nearing midnight, and despite the other's efforts to drag him away from the lab and insist that he get some rest, clear his head, Bruce was still in front of the computer, running scan after scan, hoping that at least one of them would have results that made all of this worth it.

As expected, they did not.

Bruce knew that his hope was false. He knew that working himself into the ground was senseless, and that if the tests and scans and searches hadn't shown anything by now, they probably wouldn't in the next few hours or days, even weeks, maybe, and if he wanted to delve deeper into the pits of what he really shouldn't have been beating himself up over, even months.

He knew that the others were questioning his reluctance to speak at length with any of them, and he knew that Clint had most likely caught onto _something_ during their brief encounter earlier.

He knew a lot of things, and he hoped for a lot of things, too – but it seemed like those things never wanted to work in his favor.

Bruce rubbed his eyes and sauntered out of the lab, flicking the light off as he went. There was no use in staying there any later if the results weren't going to change, and maybe it would get the others off his back. They seemed wary of his extensive presence in the lab, and perhaps by putting on his usual façade of normalcy, they'd look the other way.

However, with his streak of luck, they probably wouldn't, because even he was well aware of how he'd changed and morphed into a completely different person in the past three days. Clint had definitely noticed, however Clint noticed _everything_. Of course, so did everyone else.

Pulling back the covers on his bed, Bruce sighed and shook his head. He needed to stop thinking. It wasn't good for him, and obviously neither was staying up until ungodly hours of the morning, because it was at said ungodly hours that his brain gave him the worst. It tried to convince him that, no, Tony didn't miss him like he missed Tony, or that the entire thing was just a sham for Tony to get away, because it was always a thought in the back of Bruce's mind that he'd eventually be unwanted. He'd spent so much of his life feeling that way, having that burdened on his shoulders, that it was exactly where his mind led him.

He was just about to slide under the covers, hoping that he'd be able to sleep and forget what was on his mind when he heard a loud beep coming from somewhere in the lab. Part of him wanted to scold himself for leaving the scans on overnight, because this was the sort of thing everybody always harped on him and Tony about, but when he groggily reached the computer that was emitting the noise, he found himself grateful, if not horrifyingly worried.

Bruce stood in silence for a moment before he darted out of the lab and down the stairs, trying to remember through the labyrinth of thoughts where Steve's room was in the tower.

"Rogers!" He finally found the room and flung the door open, finding Steve sleeping straight as a board on the bed. "Rogers, come on, wake up. Steve. _Steve!"_

"What?" Steve shot up from where he was laying, confusedly looking around the dark room for a second before settling his eyes on Bruce. "Banner? What the… what time is it?"

"Doesn't matter. Where's Fury?"

"I'm not sure, maybe you could call him? What's the fuss over, anyway?"

Bruce looked over his shoulder in the general direction of the lab and ran his fingers through his hair, flustered. "I'm pretty sure I just found where Tony is."


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contrary to what people may believe, no, I don't have any pressing personal engagements that keep me from updating. I'm just a lazy arse who can actually write these in three days but fails to actually start writing them at a reasonable time.  
> But here's a chapter.  
> I hope you enjoy.

It was an eerie place.

He was sure he'd seen something like it before – the way the corridors seemed to endlessly stretch on, the faded grey paint that fell peeling from the walls. It was almost a dreamlike state, actually, and he suddenly realized that's probably where he recognized it from. Something his imagination had concocted, and unfortunately one of those things that reality decided to touch.

Exhaling through his nose, Tony splashed a handful of icy water on his face, rubbing his eyes. There was a chipped mirror in front of him and he took a moment to stare at his face, noticing the thin line of dried blood that caked on his temple and the way his eyes seemed almost lifeless, the normal spark of wit drained and replaced with a hue of gloom; one that suggested he was not only tired physically, but just tired of living.

Slowly, his gaze dropped from his face to the little circle of light in his chest, and he noticed yet again that it was dimmer than normal. It was probably just a side-effect, he thought, a side-effect of whatever this place was, and whatever it was about said place that seemed to drain him so. Still though, the lack of light was worrisome.

_But isn't everything?_

Tony abandoned the mirror and sauntered back over to the cot in the corner of the room, taking a moment to examine the thinning walls. _If I had a way to design an explosive,_ he pondered, _I could blast my way the hell out of here._

But the matter was that he _didn't_ have access to an explosive. He didn't have access to anything, really – just the bare necessities of keeping his heart beating and lungs breathing.

And to put it bluntly, it _sucked._

"You need to stop wishing."

Startled, Tony jumped at the voice behind him. He turned around to face the source, finding that familiar white smile and blue glow in the dim light.

"There's a difference between wishing and thinking," Tony replied calmly, in spite of his state. "Wishing is when you want something to happen but you know it won't. Thinking is the equivalent of plotting, pretty much."

A low chuckle came from the figure on the other side, one so insidious it almost gave Tony the chills. "And that's why I told you that you need to stop wishing. You should be the most likely to understand what your purpose is here. Any wishes of yours longing for escape are just that – _wishes._ "

For a moment, Tony was silent, and tried his best to push away the images of home swirling through his mind. The tower, looming over the city as the lights cast a familiar shadow over the city, the disembodied voice of JARVIS there to keep him company, the late nights and hectic mornings, Bruce – _Bruce._ Those late nights and busy mornings in the tower he spent with _Bruce._ When had those ended? Days, weeks, _months_?

Tony didn't know. He almost didn't want to know, so he discreetly shook his head and tuned back into the conversation.

"I didn't know you had other intentions of having me around other to sit there and stare at my obviously deteriorating beauty," Tony retorted, his voice lacking its usual spark.

"I told you on your first night what your purpose is," the other replied.

"Actually, you didn't." Tony's eye-roll was audible in his voice. "All you told me was that I'm exploiting my assets. I don't quite know how privatizing world peace and avenging the world's wrong-doings is considered _exploiting_ anything, but if you'd like to explain your twisted visions, be my guest."

"Isn't it obvious?" The tone of the voice that came with the reply was almost incredulous, demeaning Tony's question with a kind of devious sarcasm. "Isn't it obvious why I chose you and not one of the others? You are far from such a simple human. You aren't out of time. You are not a _monster_." The last word was sneered, and Tony bit his tongue to keep from snapping at the jab.

"I don't want to help you," was his reply, "I'm not going to help you destroy them."

"Who ever said that's what I'm after?"

"Consider the implications." Tony fought the urge to roll his eyes, knowing that his captor would be able to see him.

There was a soft echo against the cement floor as the other man paced back and forth down the short length of the corridor, the low, quiet chuckle continuing as he did so. "You are a clever one," he murmured, "your complications are endless."

"Yeah, well." Tony stifled a sigh and turned away, running the tip of his finger over the chipping paint. "There's a reason I didn't qualify for S.H.I.E.L.D's super-secret boy band."

"And doesn't that just _burn_ you," the words spilled ominously from the other's tongue, "doesn't that just singe your nerves, to know that they chose the others over you? The others, who have far less to fight for than yourself?"

For a brief moment, something clicked in the back of Tony's brain.

_The only thing you ever really fight for is yourself. You're not the man to make the sacrifice play._

And then it hit him, the two words that Fury had nailed in the personality profile. Two of the words that disqualified him for the Avengers Initiative, and the two words that constantly itched at the back of his mind, ones that came almost too close to preventing the mutual love he so rarely felt.

_Textbook narcissism._

It was classic.

And it was obvious that it was the reason his captor had chosen _him_ – the easiest way to tear apart a team is through the self-obsessed.

"Let that simmer." The voice pulled him back to reality. "We'll begin when you're… more apt to cooperate."

"And what if I'm never going to cooperate?" Tony shot back, his words spoken in a low monotone, his eyes elsewhere.

"You will." There was a soft echo of a creak when a door was opened a few feet away, and the footsteps paused for a moment. "Without a doubt."

And it was at that moment Tony realized that the words were probably right.

**# #**

The soft glow of the moon was just barely brushing through the windows when the last of what remained of the team filed into the room, grumbling irritably under their breath.

"It's two in the morning," Clint muttered, plopping into one of the chairs. "What could have possibly happened at two in the morning?" The archer leaned his elbow on the table and put his chin on his fist, rubbing his eyes with his other hand.

"Dr. Banner said he found something." Unlike his other, less-awake teammates, Steve was pacing back and forth across a few feet in front of the table. "And it's urgent."

"He couldn't have found it about six hours from now?" Clint's remark was barely audible, but then Natasha stepped on his foot under the table, and he shut his mouth.

"Barton was right," Bruce said, speaking for the first time since he'd woken Steve a little over an hour ago. "Those few days ago when we were in the meeting with Fury. He was right."

"About?" Clint groggily raised an eyebrow.

Rubbing his forehead, Bruce turned around and leaned his shoulder against the wall. "Everything. The blue glow, the scepter, Loki. Everything. I – we should have figured it out. It was right in front of our faces. It's _obvious._ "

Natasha leaned back in her chair with her arms folded over her chest, her eyes on the transparent tabletop. "So it's Loki," she said slowly. "Loki has Stark."

Bruce just nodded with half a shrug of his shoulders, averting his gaze.

"What the hell does Loki want Tony for?" Clint asked incredulously, no longer slouched tiredly over the table.

"To hurt him?" Natasha suggested.

"To hurt _us,_ " Steve corrected, finally taking a seat at the table. "We're a team, remember? Taking one is taking us all."

"Well, he picked a hell of a target for that one," Natasha replied with a sigh. She stole a glance at Bruce who was still standing quietly a few feet from Steve's chair, his face taut. She could have sworn she noticed the scientist flinch at her comment, but a moment later he was headed towards the door with his face turned towards the ground.

Clint twisted in his seat to watch the doctor leave, one eyebrow raised in confusion. "Dr. Banner?"

"Where are you going?" Steve added, finishing the sentence.

Bruce stopped for a moment, his skin burning. His hand was on the doorknob, turning it gently, and he hesitated before he responded, "To see what more I can find." To his dismay, his voice nearly cracked on the last word. But then he was gone, his footsteps ghosting down the hall towards his bedroom.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH LAWDY it's been so long. but I haven't forgotten about this. In fact, I think about it a lot, I just haven't... like, acted on it xD So, if anyone still bothers with this story... here's a new chapter.

The thick oak of Bruce's bedroom door fell shut with a thump, and even though he knew the others were aware he'd lied about going to the lab, there wasn't a thread in his mind that cared.

There had to be a way to find him. Tony wouldn't be gone forever; he was _Tony Stark,_ for heaven's sake, and it went without saying that the world just wouldn't be the same without him.

Honestly, nothing would be the same without Tony, and Bruce decided to dismiss the notion of whether that was for better or for worse.

It had barely been an hour since he'd discovered Tony's likely captor, and already a million scenarios were spreading through Bruce's brain in a deadly path, annihilating even his smallest shreds of logic and reason like a raging wild fire. What did Loki want Stark for? His genius, his technology, the artificial heart that worked every second to keep the real one beating?

Or did he want Tony to get through to the team? Bruce leaned forward and put his face in his hands, rubbing circles into his temples. _Now is not the time to get angry,_ he told himself, feeling his breath gradually growing more rapid. _Now is not the time, Banner._ He curled inwards again, cringing against the faint burn in the back of his head, one that was expanding so hastily it almost left him hopeless. Fumbling for control, Bruce drank in a deep breath of air and opened his eyes to the dim room around him – and then it hit him, like the detonation of a bomb inside a small city.

Loki was after the monster. He always had been. Clearly, Tony was linked to the Hulk, and going through him, a mere man, was much more discreet, much more _mischievous_ , than simply taking Bruce first. It was a scheme to drive a dagger through them all, sever the ties – oh, Loki was a clever bastard. So clever, even, that for a moment, Bruce doubted his own reasoning, but everything just seemed overtly obvious to him. _Too_ obvious, as if there was something missing from the equation.

_Equation,_ Bruce repeated, _the things I do best._

He didn't quite know where to begin with this, so he almost felt lucky when there was a gentle knock on his door. Whoever it was didn't bother to ask for his permission before entering, and when he looked up, he was surprised to find it was Natasha.

"You ran off pretty fast back there," she commented, strolling into the room with her arms folded casually over her chest. "I thought you said you were going to the lab?" Her inquiry was obviously rhetorically incredulous, and her tone suggested nothing less.

Adjusting his posture, Bruce shrugged sheepishly. "It's just what came to mind."

"Hm." Natasha looked away for a moment and leaned her shoulder against the wall, giving a Bruce an almost studious, sidelong glance, one he could feel poring into his skin without even looking her way. "Well, we were all a bit confused. Mind giving an explanation for all that?"

"It's all just…" Bruce let his sentence taper into a sigh, twisting a finger into his slightly-matted locks of hair. "A bit overwhelming." _Understatement of the year,_ he thought, mentally rolling his eyes at himself.

"Understandable." Warily, Bruce glanced back at the female assassin, only to find the glint in her eyes was one only too familiar, a look of hers that seemed to be reserved only for him.

It was a sort of fear, a look similar to the one he'd witnessed when they'd first met, and Bruce wondered what part of his current state could horrify her so. Had he been on the verge of an incident only moments before? Yes, but he knew better than to let himself lose it so easily, especially when he couldn't bring himself to explain the reason why.

"We'll find him, Bruce," Natasha said suddenly, and the rare dash of sentiment and sincerity in her voice took the doctor by surprise. "This is Tony Stark we're dealing with. He can't be gone for long."

With the way she was looking at him, there was a twinge of concern in the back of Bruce's mind. Did she know? She couldn't know. They'd kept their relations so well-hidden that the façade of normalcy was now a mere impulse, something automatic that just clicked like a protective instinct. Nobody knew, nobody except for Tony, Bruce, and… well, JARVIS, but he didn't quite count.

"I suppose you're right," Bruce finally responded, pulling himself to his feet. He sauntered over to the window, absentmindedly adjusting the curtains. "If we don't find a way, he will."

"You have an awful lot of faith in him, Banner."

For a moment, Bruce hesitated and slowly lowered his hand from the window. Natasha's hard gaze on his back was evident, and he almost regretted turning to face her as he said, "He deserves a lot more than he receives."

**# #**

"Do you believe in fate, Mr. Stark?"

The question came as more of a rhetorical remark, like one of those ominous lines of dialogue from the weekly crime procedural. But Tony turned anyway, his face to the wall and arms clasped behind his back.

"No." Like the preceding query, his answer with simple, dull. "It's pretty stupid."

"Elaborate." The unseen, curious smile was even audible in Loki's voice. "What is it about the concept that you find you utterly insipid?"

"What is it about the concept that you find so _utterly plausible?_ " Tony spat mockingly, his tone like the hiss of a serpent's silver tongue. "The idea that there's already a whole path set out for you that you can't change doesn't make any sense. It's a pile of crap."

"Funny," Loki began, the word drawn out slowly, almost painfully, "that you say that. Funny, that for a man so opposed to contradiction, that you say such a thing."

Tony swallowed thickly and suppressed a roll of his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You shouldn't be alive unless it was for a _reason._ " The insidious grin widened, as did Tony's apprehensions. "And you know that. You know that in your _heart."_

For a moment, Tony's dysfunctional heart skipped a beat, but his expression remained gravely carved into his face like stone. It was something he'd said, and something that held true, but not – not for this. This was not what he'd intended to imply, but how was he expected to know?

Damn, fate was a bitch.

In a brief moment of bravery, he stepped forward, so close that his hand nearly brushed the tip of the god's infamous scepter. He wet his lips and inhaled sharply through his nose, feeling that new yet somehow so familiar burn slither its tendrils around his mind.

"Then why don't you tell me what that reason is?"


	6. Chapter Six

"Your purpose," the words were sickeningly long and low, but somehow horribly bittersweet. "Your reason for being here, your _duty_ , is to destroy. It's simple, really, what you have to do. You can right where I've wronged. You can succeed when I've failed." There was a part of Loki's soft, biting tone that seemed almost indifferent, and Tony could almost picture the god's shoulders rising and falling casually as he finished his sentence.

Without even asking for details, he knew exactly what the god of mischief wanted him to do.

Whether he was going to do it, however, was a different story.

"They've wronged you." Loki's voice sliced through the air once more. "You spoke of them as 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes', did you not?" Swallowing thickly, Tony gave a brief nod. "And have they lived up to that expectation?"

Tony stood his ground, his arms held limply at his sides. "Yes." And he wasn't telling a lie - he'd witnessed how they, The Avengers, _Earth's Mightiest Heroes_ , had banded together despite their utmost differences and perils to defeat the man that now stood before him, half-enveloped in a shadow. But there was something itching at the back of his mind, the gears that had grown rickety over the previous weeks (or months? He didn't even know) finally beginning to turn again.

"What about yourself?" The inquiry caught Tony completely off-guard, and he found himself with an eyebrow raised. "Have you lived up to your own expectations?"

After a beat of silence, the smirk that recently had been so unfamiliar crept its way onto Tony's lips. "Well, yes."

"You're wrong." Suddenly, the blunt end of Loki's scepter hit the floor with an echoing thud, sending a startled shiver down Tony's spine. "Your expectations are far higher than what they can achieve. It's _pathetic_. Associating yourself with them is simply... ludicrous, Mr. Stark, so much that it's almost painful," the raven-haired god spat, his face twisted into a mask of something that looked like pity.

Taken aback, Tony blinked in astonishment. "Who ever said you had to get involved with what I do, or what they do?" he retorted, his gaze breaking free of the hypnotizing rays of blue that shone from the end of the scepter. "We took care of you months ago, Reindeer Games, I don't need your words of wisdom."

"Oh, this isn't about me." It took less than a second for Loki's face to transform into an insidious grin. "This isn't about me in the slightest." Tony's jaw hardened as he noticed the other man boldly taking a slow step forward, hiking up his grip on the scepter to lean the tip into Tony's worn chest.

"Really?" Inside, Tony's thoughts were aflame, screaming orders that told him to keep his distance, but outside he wore his typical tough exterior. "Sure doesn't look that way."

"Soon," the word slipped from Loki's tongue like a drop of savory, crimson blood from a fresh wound. "Soon you'll open your eyes and see."

"I don't -" Before Tony could begin to form the remainder of his sentence, he felt the pressure of the scepter against the dim circle of light embedded in his chest. His thoughts reverted back to the previous, similar encounter, what was left of the shreds of logic in his brain coaxing him into believing that this one would end the same.

He narrowed his eyes, frantically hoping and searching for a way out of all of this as the pressure increased, but his mind dipped into thoughts of the worst. There was a moment when Tony swore he heard a crack in the protective casing over the arc reactor, and he drew in a sharp breath, clenching his teeth. No, it couldn't break. He'd made sure of it - nothing could penetrate that casing, not even the most powerful of his own weapons. But now it seemed as if the device that served as his lifeline was breaking, the glass crumbling as his captor forced his way into Tony's heart, tearing through what was left of his identity.

And at that moment, when the deceitful rays reached his heart, all he had left to think was, _You've already taken Banner from my life,_ he squeezed his eyes shut, _don't take him from my memories, too._

**# #**

It didn't take him that long to pack.

Having lived several years of his life on the run, not knowing when or where he'd have to go next, Bruce had grown accustomed to hastily deciding what was a necessity and what wasn't, and it took him less than an hour to gather said necessities and be out the door in a matter of minutes.

This time was no different, and honestly, he'd left out some things he'd usually take in order to make his departure even simpler. This time, it wasn't about _Bruce's_ well-being, it was about Tony's, and the only things Bruce needed to care for himself on this... journey, so to speak, were few and far between.

Now the only issue he had left was how he was to get around the remainder of the team and leave without a trace. Bruce wasn't stupid, and he was well aware of the onslaught of wary glances and frequent inquires of his well-being he'd received from the others as of late. But again, this wasn't about _him,_ and something in the back of his mind convinced him that the rest of the team was just as conscious of that as Bruce was.

As he made his way through the dimly lit tower, Bruce glanced hurriedly into each of the rooms he passed, making sure that he'd go unseen. He paused as he passed the lab, where the only light was the soft glow of a computer screen filtering through the transparent doorway. Bruce sighed, slipping his hand out of his pocket to place it on the cool glass. He was done with computers. He was done spending hours trying to pinpoint Tony's exact location with some stupid program that was probably too far off to begin with, and he was done spending time cooped up in the rooms that even still _smelled_ like Tony, and most of all, he was done making excuses for his sudden lack of spirit since the enthusiastic billionaire had disappeared.

Bruce shook his head and took his hand from the glass, forcing himself onward down the hallway. Yes, he was done with searching and hoping and wondering, and hopefully by the time this was all over, he'd be done with feeling hope _less_ , too.

He'd just about reached the back door of the tower, stopping for a moment to prepare himself for the sting of the night's bitter air. He reached for the doorknob, but just before he pushed the door open, there was a voice behind him.

"Where the hell are you going at midnight?"

Bruce ran his tongue over his lips, dropping his hand to his side. "I was just going for a walk," he replied calmly, even surprising himself with how believable the remark sounded.

"You look awfully weighed down for a casual stroll." Clint raised an eyebrow, letting his gaze wander over Bruce's shoulder bag and back up again. "Afraid you're going to get stranded in the dark?"

"I guess you never know." Bruce shrugged, turning towards the door again.

"Don't lie to me, Doc."

For a moment, the both of them were silent, but Bruce found the courage to break it only a few seconds later.

"I need to go find him. I'm done with the guessing games, Clint. It's not getting us anywhere."

"What makes you think you're going to do that alone?" Clint replied nonchalantly. "Look, we know that Loki has him. But that's it. We don't know where, or what's been done. We don't know any of the _important_ stuff. Tony's been gone for almost a month, Bruce. Going after him after all this time with almost zero information is nuts." He gave the scientist a reassuring look, gesturing for Bruce to step away from the door. "Come on. We'll figure something else out."

Bruce stood his ground, and the dissonance between Clint's calm reassurance and Bruce's dead-end determination was almost tangible.

"There's nothing else to figure out," Bruce responded sternly, placing his hand on the doorknob once more. He began to turn it, casting his gaze away from Clint. "I'm going. And when I come back, I'll have Stark with me."

Before Clint had a chance to respond, Bruce pushed the door open and stepped into the crisp air of the cool autumn's night. He gripped the car keys in his pocket, holding tight as he slid into the nearest of Tony's luxurious vehicles.

That was it. It was all or nothing, and Bruce wouldn't settle for anything different. Either they both came back from this, or nobody did. He tried to push the latter from his mind, but Bruce knew that even if it ended for the worst, it would be easier, even sickeningly so, than living in a world without Tony.

His thoughts ran in those same circles as he backed the car out of its spot, and he could feel his apprehensions growing with the distance between himself and those he left behind.


	7. Chapter Seven

Clint didn't sleep for the rest of that night.

In fact, he didn't even go back to his room. He stood by the back door for some number of minutes he didn't care to count, and after the headlights of the car had long disappeared, he still stood. He waited a while for Bruce to walk back through that door, shrugging one shoulder and admitting that his decision had been an insipid one, but as the hour neared one in the morning, the doctor was still out, and Clint realized that he probably wasn't coming back.

_Wasn't Bruce supposed to be the smart one?_

The team was down to three now, what with Thor still back in Asgard - and hopefully, _hopefully_ neither Steve nor Natasha would make the decision to go after Bruce. This whole ordeal had started with searching aimlessly for Tony, and Clint had hoped that it wouldn't turn into some sort of deadly wild goose chase - but that was unfortunately what it was beginning to look like.

Eventually, Clint just shrugged exasperatedly and turned away from the door, making his way into the dim kitchen (luckily, what was left of the damage had been mostly repaired - nobody cared to look at the wreckage and remember how it came to be) to take a seat at the breakfast bar, resting his forehead in his palm. Everything about this situation was just confusing and frustrating and, quite honestly, downright irritating.

"If Loki would just get the damn hint already," he muttered, exhaling a long sigh as he leaned back in the chair.

"Get what hint?" The sound of Natasha's feet padding softly against the tile as she approached the seated archer were barely audible, and nearly took Clint by surprise. "Is something going on?" She leaned her hip against the bar, casting Clint a sidelong glance.

"Hasn't something been going on for the past month?" Clint responded, his voice with a hint of coldness that he hadn't intended.

Natasha took a second to roll her eyes, giving him a disapproving glance. "Don't get smart with me, Clint."

A humorless smirk slid onto Clint's face for a split second, but he wiped it away with his hand as he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. "Banner's gone."

The words hung heavily in the air for what felt like hours. Natasha gazed straight at Clint, her face a mask of something in between worry and utter confusion. She slid into the stool beside him, resting her elbow on the counter as she gathered her thoughts.

"What do you mean, he's gone?" she inquired, struck with a horrible sense of déjà-vu.

"I mean that he just left about thirty minutes ago." Flustered, Clint pulled his gaze back from the wall and set it on Natasha. "I ran into him by the back door. He had a bag and said he was going to go find Stark. I tried to tell him that it was a bad idea, but he just shrugged it off and drove away."

Once again, Natasha paused to drink in the information. Well, damn - that was another one gone. As if there wasn't already enough on their plate, they now had yet another member of the team gone off to who-knows-where, not to mention one of the most vital in this particular, twisted situation.

"He'll come back," she confirmed slowly, leaning on her elbows. "Banner's smart. He'll realize that he made a mistake and he'll come back."

"I don't think so." Clint shook his head. "He never does this, Tasha. I think he's pretty set on finding Stark out there."

"Well," Natasha began, "their friendship is... quite the sentiment."

"Yeah. Their... _friendship_ really is." Clint cleared his throat, shooting a glance at the woman beside him.

She clearly picked up on his hint, because in turn, her eyebrow lifted skeptically. "You sound aloof," she commented, pushing a piece of hair from her scrutinizing gaze.

"You can't be telling me that I'm the only one who sees it." He hesitated in his sentence, giving Natasha a second to absorb his words. "Well, maybe Rogers doesn't, since he seems to try and be oblivious to that sort of thing. But I can't be the only one who thinks that their friendship is just a bit more than... _only_ friendship." Clint turned in his seat and mirrored Natasha's gaze, waiting for her response. By the expression she wore, he could tell that he'd been right - he wasn't crazy. Maybe just a little, actually, but this wasn't a time for joking, and Clint wouldn't have mentioned it if it wasn't something he felt was vital.

Natasha pressed her lips into a thin line, contemplating. Clint's theory could certainly account for Bruce's resigned, rigid behavior, and supplied more than ample evidence for the scientist's sudden departure. Normally, Natasha distanced herself from caring about such relations between any two people, let alone members of the team, but there was something about this in particular... something that wasn't quite right.

There was a part of her that wanted to believe that it wasn't a mere coincidence; however, that part also persuaded her that everything was already complicated enough, and if anything, she didn't need to worry herself over who those two were sleeping with, and whether they were sleeping with each other.

"Even if it is," she replied finally, fixating her gaze on one of the many digital clocks in the room, "it drove Banner to the point of running after Tony, so now we have to work on finding both of them."

An exasperated sigh rolled softly from Clint's lips as he folded his arms over his chest. "Do you realize how difficult this is going to be? He didn't even tell us where he thought Stark might be located."

Standing, Natasha took a few steps towards the exit, her eyes wandering over the bleakly vacant hallways. "I guess we best get to work, then."

**# #**

It was around one-thirty in the morning when Bruce reached the airport. He'd made the snap-decision to buy himself a reasonably inexpensive ticket when the news had come about, and now he clutched it in his hand as he walked briskly through the heavy, smog-infested morning air.

The lobby of the airport was eerily bare, and Bruce felt as if each of his footsteps echoed for a mile as the soles of his shoes hit the tile. Behind the counter stood a woman of around thirty, her heavy-lidded eyes staring blankly at the computer screen until she heard the scientist approach.

"Can I help you?" she inquired, her petty attempt at masking her fatigue failing miserably.

"I need to board Flight 4470," Bruce replied lowly. The woman simply nodded and gestured him towards the terminal to the left, punching something into the computer with a swift swipe of her fingers.

"It's boarding right over there. The plane leaves in ten minutes." Bruce smiled gratefully at her and made his way towards the terminal, just catching the last of the woman's voice as she half-heartedly added, "Have a safe trip, sir."

At that, Bruce couldn't help but crack a sarcastic smirk for the briefest of moments. _Have a safe trip_. Yes, he certainly hoped it would turn out that way, that everything would run smoothly and that everyone would get home unscathed. But he didn't get his hopes up. That was unlikely, and he'd known it from the start - so, no, the trip ahead was not going to be a safe one, but Bruce wasn't going to let that be an obstacle.

_I_ _f anything devastating is to happen, it's better me than Tony_ _._

His breath was shaky as he boarded the nearly-empty plane, making quick work of finding his window seat and shoving his bag in the storage compartment. The minutes left until takeoff seemed to last for hours and Bruce was growing impatient, but finally the silence was broken by somebody's - pilot, flight attendant, he didn't care who - voice instructing the few passengers to fasten their seatbelts.

As far as the flight went, things seemed to go smoothly, but Bruce's insides were a soup of apprehension and distress - he fidgeted with his hands and shifted in his seat, looking out the window in hopes of finding some sort of comfort, but gaining nothing. He was so caught up in his own sea of consternation that he hadn't once noticed the woman who'd taken the seat beside him, and who was watching him from the corner of her eye with a sort of worried intensity.

"Where in India are you headed to?" she asked softly, her words barely above a whisper. They took Bruce by surprise as he turned his head to glance at her, taking in her appearance of about sixty, yet still with an air of youthful exploration about her.

Bruce nervously ran his tongue over his bottom lip, swallowing thickly before answering with, "Kolkata." He somewhat succeeded in pushing his errant thoughts away, knowing for sure that the approximate location he'd discovered wasn't coincidental in the slightest.

"Ah." The woman nodded, flashing a smile in Bruce's direction. "I'm headed there myself. Well, I have family to visit in Haora, but I figured I'd explore a little for a few days. Have some fun. Have you ever been before?"

"Um, yes, a few times." Bruce returned her nod, the ambiance surrounding him aloof. He couldn't tell of this was just mindless small talk or if the woman had noticed his uncomfortable stance, but he decided to simply go along with it anyway. "So, I... you're on here awfully early. I thought I was going to be only one. You like traveling in the morning...?"

"Oh, sure. It's easier for time zone changes, a hell of a lot less crowded. The tickets are a steal, too." She paused for a moment to wink. "What about yourself? Not one for crowded airlines?"

Bruce chewed on the inside of his cheek, casting his gaze towards his hands that were still clasped anxiously in his lap. "It was just a very... last-minute decision."

"Mmm." She pressed her lips into a thin line, keeping on watchful eye on Bruce. "Last-minute emergency?"

"You could say that."

Bruce took a second to glance at the woman beside him, her eyes glinting along with the knowing smile she wore on her lips. There was something about her expression that struck a chord within him, something he couldn't quite put his finger on - but he shook it out of his head a moment later, convincing himself that he was merely tired and overstressed.

"Well, son," she said after the lull, placing a rather frail hand on the thick sleeve of the coat that covered Bruce's arm. "Whatever the situation is, I've found that if you feel strongly enough for something, it'll all work out in the end eventually. Sometimes it's the more frightening things that make you realize that. You just gotta have a little faith."

It was brief, and it was unfamiliar, so much that Bruce doubted it had even happened. But for the first time in weeks, he smiled. It was a nice moment, feeling his lips curve upwards and his face relax, and it was almost as if just for a second, the burden had been lifted from his shoulders and he was free again, no longer under the weight of his previous apprehensions.

"I hope you're right," he replied, finally able to lean back a bit more comfortably in his seat.

"No, no." The woman shook her head, wearing a tight-lipped smile. "It doesn't matter if I'm right or not, it matters if _you_ are."

It was only a matter of seconds until the smile on Bruce's face contorted into a mask of confusion. "But, you just said -"

"You'll see, son, you'll see." She put a reassuring pat on his arm, before removing her hand and settling into her seat. "Now, we've got a long flight ahead. Relax. Clear your head. It'll be over before you know it."

Only a few moments passed before the woman dozed off, but as much as he tried, Bruce just couldn't do the same. The flight seemed to last for ages, his mind racing as his stomach twisted into knots, and some sickening part of him almost wished that his infamous alter-ego would take over simply because it would hopefully get him to Tony faster.

Finally, though, it came to an end, and Bruce found himself scrambling to exit the plane and return to the only-too-familiar streets of Kolkata, but the only, unfortunate difference was that this time he had no preset destination. Already, the streets were swarmed with people, and it gave Bruce a strange sense of belonging - but, no, he wasn't here for that. He wasn't here to run and hide, he was here to find the person who so generously gave him a reason to quit running and hiding, and he almost thought that it was some sort of twisted, deceitful circle.

Running a hand through his tousled hair, Bruce sighed and reached into his bag, pulling out the notepad on which he'd scribbled what he thought might be Tony's approximate location. Something about all of this, all of this commotion and confusion and consternation, told him that the whole process wasn't going to go the way he had planned. But then he thought back to his brief encounter with the woman on the plane - and how that woman, that _stranger,_ seemed to be the only person who in the past month seemed to... have faith.

And somehow, there was something about that small shred of conviction that manifested within Bruce's too lifeless of a soul, and he started walking. Walking where, he didn't know, but as he pushed through the warm, nameless bodies on the streets, watching the husbands with their wives and mothers with their children, watching the smiles on their faces or the frowns among the poor, he almost felt that he did.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like this fic has been on a bit of an updating schedule lately. I'm actually quite proud of this, cause it's pretty much the first time it's happened. Like ever. So if this schedule is destined to continue, plan to see an update at least some time every weekend. I hope I'll be able to keep up and won't disappoint. And as always, I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and thank you all for reading!

Two days.

Bruce had spent two days already sifting through different people and different places, scurrying from village to village in hopes that the vague location he'd scribbled in a notepad would somehow make itself apparent and that all of his toil and fear that had accumulated in the past month would finally pay off.

He'd skitted his way around corners and through alleys, around some of the lopsided slums he found all too familiar from his previous visitations, aiming to convince himself that at least one would prevail as Tony's unknown location, but it seemed as though his search had remained disconcertingly unsuccessful. Kolkata was the same place it had been eight months ago, and it seemed like the prodigious CEO of Stark Industries hadn't left his mark on any of it.

Part of him was drawn to the particular section he'd stayed in before Natasha had come to retrieve him - it was small, it was secluded, and seemed like a perfect place to hold a heavily acclaimed billionaire captive. But Loki wouldn't make it that easy... would he? No, no, he couldn't. Loki was the god of mischief, and if anything, Bruce's suspicions were merely a mind trick to get the scientist oh so very close, only to find that all along he'd been horribly, painfully mistaken.

Sighing, Bruce shifted uncomfortably on the bench he'd found, checking his watch. Three in the afternoon. If he got moving now, he'd have time to possibly scout another part of the village and find another place to settle down (unfortunately, at the rate he'd been moving, finding a hotel or something of the sort was out of the question). Within a few minutes he'd gathered his things and set off on his way, rolling up his sleeves to stay cooler as he walked.

Seeing as he'd circled the lesser part of the city already, it didn't take Bruce long to reach the more civilized areas, the noise and bustle audible from afar. The notes he'd taken back in New York had told him that Tony was most likely somewhere in the south of the city, and luckily Bruce had coordinated his route to assure that he'd end up just there. Inhaling the smoggy air, he stepped onto the sidewalk that would lead him into the city, following the worn and scuffed pathway into the herds of people hustling throughout the streets. There was something about the whole image that sent a twinge of aching nostalgia through his chest, the scenes and people so similar to the fast-paced city of New York that it was almost painful. His hand felt cold as it met the air by his side, and he curled his fingers around the nothingness that replaced the usual warmth of Tony's hand around his own - this whole thing, this fiasco, this awful, twisted disarray of unnecessary hatred and despair, was just so utterly dejected, that some of him almost, just almost, wanted to give in.

But he kept walking anyway, because as difficult and tediously secretive as this all was, the unspoken words of surrender would tell more than his current quest ever could.

As he walked, Bruce glanced at each of the buildings he passed, searching for any suspicious signs that suggested that it held the thing he was looking for. He scanned the windows, the doors, the side panels, and even the dirt surrounding the entrances - nothing seemed to prevail. Bruce stifled a sigh and took a seat on a rickety bench he'd spotted between two buildings, resting his forehead in his palm. For a moment, he let his acute senses slip away, the noise whirring around his head fading into a dull buzz as he slipped into his own world, allowing himself a brief respite from the copious stress he'd piled on within the past two days. His eyes swept over the dry dirt that covered the ground, taking in the different shades of brown and black that all mixed into one ambiguous substance. It was just one giant sea of drab, lifeless colour, swirling across the ground in a whirlwind of dismal monotony, until he spotted what looked like a speck of... blue?

Bruce narrowed his eyes, pulling himself up from his seat to examine the soft speck on the dirt. It was only inches from the entrance of the building to his right, and his mind twirled around the notion of whether this was a sign of sorts, or if he was just overestimating every little thing in hopes that something would pull through. The speck almost seemed to glisten, and Bruce's rationale told him it was probably something insignificant like a piece of broken glass, but his gut was pulling him towards the door only mere feet from where he stood.

Shooting a cautious glance behind him, Bruce placed his hand on the knob and stepped through the doorway, wary of what he might find on the other side.

**# #**

"How far could he have gone, really?" Clint kicked back in his seat, running a hand over his face before continuing to sift through the files and papers scattered across one of the tables in the lab. Being in the bright, spacious room was almost eerie without the presence of the two staple scientists of the team, and Clint found that it was almost uncomfortable. "He didn't give us any of the alleged leads he found before. He wouldn't keep that from us."

"Maybe that was his whole point," Natasha replied dryly, her eyes glued to the screen of Bruce's computer as her fingers glided across the keys. "He probably doesn't want us to know, which is also why he decided to leave at one in the morning. And also why he made his computer so difficult to hack." Frustratedly, her lips screwed to the side, and she continued pounding away at the keys.

"But _why._ " Sighing, Clint flipped through a few more papers, skimming over the almost indecipherable numbers scribbled across them.

"God only knows why," Steve put in, shaking his head. "Dr. Banner's complicated, we all know that. But we're all a _team_ here, and why he wouldn't want us to know what he's up to concerning a missing member of said team is beyond me."

"I'm telling you," Clint's voice was barely above a murmur, "something's up with him and Stark." Cautiously, he shot a glance at Natasha.

In response, Natasha sent a warning glance over her shoulder back at the archer. "Maybe we should put off worrying about the reason why until we actually find where he ran off to."

"Yes." Steve cleared his throat and pulled another manila folder from the file cabinet. "She's right. We're not going to understand any of Bruce's reasoning until we find him."

"Yeah, well," Clint scoffed, leaning his elbows on the table. "That's just going fine and grand, isn't it."

Nothing was said in response, but in secret, the other two agreed. Steve chewed on the inside of his cheek while the sound of Natasha tapping at the computer keys floated around the desolate room, an air of emptiness hanging in each of their midsts. Whatever Bruce had done to keep his whereabouts hidden, he'd done it well, and the three remaining team members couldn't help but think that there was some sort of incredulous reasoning behind it.

"You know what we should do?" Clint said suddenly, earning an earnest glance from Steve in response. "We need to get Thor down here. Thor could probably find Loki, and if we find Loki we can find Stark. If we find Stark, we can find Banner, or at least it would get us closer."

"Sounds like a decent idea," Steve replied. "But I'm not sure how we'd get him back here."

"I'm sure he'd figure out a way if he finds out that his little brother is wreaking havoc again." Clint shrugged, looking back at Natasha, who hadn't said a word. She was hunched over the computer still, her gaze scrutinizing the screen in a way that was somewhere between suspicious and stunned. "...Tasha?"

"Kolkata." Natasha smirked humorlessly and shook her head. "You're kidding. Kolkata."

"What about Kolkata?" Steve inquired, raising an eyebrow.

"Banner bought a plane ticket to Kolkata two days ago," Natasha explained. "And if you read into these maps and simulations he's put together, that's also where he placed Tony's approximate location."

"Well, that's a start." Clint rubbed his hands together and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. "But what's the big deal about India?"

Exhaling heavily through her nose, Natasha twisted in her seat to face the two men. "Because that's where he was hiding when he was called in for the first Loki mission."

"Coincidence?" Clint murmured, dumbfounded.

"I think not."

**# #**

Compared to the outside city, the building Bruce had entered was rather empty. In fact, it was _extremely_ empty, quite mysteriously so, and Bruce felt his heart pumping just a tad bit faster as he made his way throughout the corridors.

As he walked, there was a recently unfamiliar feeling of closure rising in his gut, one that suggested that maybe he'd finally cracked the code and he'd arrived where he was supposed to. It seemed like of all places Loki could have dragged Tony off to, this would be it, and a small part in the back of Bruce's brain felt accomplished. However, there was also something about all of this that just felt too _easy,_ like he was missing some part of the equation, and that there was some larger component he'd need to solve before anything could be fully, completely over.

But then he thought back over the past month, thought of those late nights spent in the lab poring over computers and maps and files, those sleepless nights he'd spent tossing and turning and those lonely days that passed devoid of even the smallest bit of contentment, and he realized that no, not one part of this had been anything close to _easy_ at all.

Sighing, Bruce pressed on through the rickety hallways, passing between the looming pieces of machinery scattered throughout the rooms. He searched for any sign of a stairwell or something of the sort, his logic telling him that if anything, the most likely place for anybody like Loki or Tony to be in this place was a basement. To his dismay, the building was rather enormous, and it took him much longer than needed to finally locate the stairwell he was looking for.

It only got darker as he went down. The building wasn't very well-lit to begin with, but with each descending step, the lights seemed to fade even more, and each fall of his foot became all the more audible. In fact, it seemed like the sound of his footsteps was the only one that echoed through the air, but as he walked further down the dim corridor, Bruce swore that he heard the sound of another being, maybe even two.

He wasn't wrong. Finally, after what felt like hours of walking, he came to a halt around a corner, being sure to keep himself hidden as he peered around to make out the two figures standing some ways away. He couldn't tell if they were arguing, but the taller of the two was making some sort of wide gesture with his arms while the other simply stood and watched, and it wasn't long before the taller man turned away and disappeared into another room while the other turned towards where Bruce was hiding. He inched back towards cover as the person approached, but still managed to get a good look at the man.

Tony.

Oh, god, it was Tony, and there was something about him that just looked so... delightfully horrible.

Bruce stood with his back pressed to the wall, watching closely as Tony approached. When the other man was only mere feet away, Bruce peeked his head around the corner, locking his gaze on Tony's upright form.

"Tony," he whispered, trying to get the man's attention. "Tony, over here."

It seemed like Tony hadn't heard him, and Bruce's face fell. However, Tony was a whole lot closer now, and in the moment of bravery, Bruce stretched out his arm and caught Tony by the wrist. "Hey."

Tony halted, his wrist stiff in Bruce's grasp. Slowly, he turned his head to look at the scientist, watching as a grateful smile spread cautiously across his face. Gently, Bruce tugged on his wrist, forcing him to take a step closer.

"Tony," Bruce said again, savoring the way the name felt as it slipped off his tongue. He locked his gaze on the other's man eyes, those eyes that for some reason just seemed to utterly blank, yet still filled him with the sense of comfort that had long been so absent. "Tony, hey, we're going back to New York, okay? We're gonna get you out of here. We're gonna go home."

Silence. And during that silence, Tony simply stood, leaving Bruce with just enough time to take a good look at him. How his eyes were so blank, his face so taut, and the almost statue-like way the genius held his body only led Bruce to notice how the arc reactor, Tony's lifeline, glowed so much brighter than it had before, the usual blue glow blazing as an almost painful shade of white.

Slowly, shakily, Bruce brought his gaze back up to Tony's face, feeling as the wrist he'd been holding was wrenched from his grasp. And then that hand was on the front of his neck, the fingers gripping at his jaw with a raging intensity. Bruce's eyes widened while Tony's eyes narrowed, staring down at the doctor with an onslaught of furious scrutiny.

"My home isn't with you."


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one is just a little bit shorter than the recent updates, so I apologize for that. Also, being primarily an angst writer and honorary horrible person, I take full responsibility for the crushing of anybody's hearts, including the characters I write about.  
> That being said, enjoy! xD

As soon as the words slipped from Tony's tongue, everything seemed to stop. Bruce was still acutely aware of the pressure on his throat, but the sounds and scents that swirled around his being suddenly vanished, leaving him with nothing but the cold gaze and strong fingers of the man before him.

Needless to say, this was certainly not how Bruce had expected his trip to end up.

"Tony." There was a bit of logic that told Bruce it wasn't a good idea to speak, but he continued anyway, allowing himself a small shred of hope that he'd be able to coax his companion out of this insanity. "Tony. Come on now, this isn't you. This is someone else controlling you. Just let me go and we'll... we'll figure all of this out. Okay? We'll figure it out."

In response, Tony's grip only tightened for a few seconds longer before he forcefully gave Bruce's body a thrust into the wall behind him. "There's nothing to figure out, _Banner,_ " he spat venomously, giving the scientist's name an extra dose of hostility.

"Tony, come _on -_ " Bruce detested being reduced to pleading, but he felt it was all he had left, despite the short amount of time.

"No. You come with me," was Tony's harsh reply, his jaw set tight. Even his voice was different, holding an unfamiliar coldness, a tone that Bruce didn't recognize, and one that fit Tony like a farmer fit New York City - it simply didn't work, and it deemed the billionaire almost unrecognizable.

Still under Tony's sharp eyes, Bruce decided it would be a better idea to hold his tongue and simply do what he was told. It wasn't at all something that felt normal, nor did he think that following this newly-transformed Tony would somehow clear his worries; it all just seemed like one of his typical nightmares, and selfishly, he hoped that it was.

He didn't realize that the other man had begun to turn around until he felt a burning set of fingers grip his arm. Grimacing, he fell into step behind Tony, his curious eyes scanning their surroundings with each step they took into an unfamiliar area. There was a part of him that wished he was still back at the tower in the lab, but then he took a look around at the dingy ambiance, the emptiness of the corridors and the dismal coldness to the place, and Bruce realized that being back home without Tony there again would hold the same kind of melancholy.

The grip on his arm almost stung, and Bruce held back a sigh of discontent. He didn't know which was worse - the events that led to this or the outcome.

Just as the scientist had begun to tune back into the world around him, the hand left his arm and he found himself pushed into an area all the more desolate.

"Found something, sir." Tony's voice came from ahead of him, speaking to an anonymous source.

"Mmm." The reply was a sound somewhere between a hum and a growl. "You found a monster, did you?" It was at that point that Bruce realized it was Loki who was standing only feet away, his back turned.

"You could say that," Tony replied, shooting a cold glance in Bruce's direction, one that almost stung. "I thought this was what you wanted."

Turning, Loki let his sharp, cutting gaze roam over Bruce's rather disheveled form. "Oh yes," he purred, "it's exactly what I wanted. Perhaps you are useful after all, Mr. Stark."

Bruce shuddered to himself. What was all of this? It felt like a dream, in a way, one of those awful nightmares that would occasionally warp his brain in the night. The way the two men before him spoke was just unnatural and... wrong, so very wrong. It seemed like it was scripted with the way it was so short, so cutting - it wasn't anything like Tony's typical attitude, and the petrifying thought that his boyfriend had been dreadfully, permanently compromised scampered through Bruce's mind.

"What am I supposed to do with him?" Tony asked suddenly.

"Leave him here," Loki replied, beginning to pace back and forth over a short distance, the hem of his cape swirling around his heels. "I'll take care of it. Work on finding whatever - or whoever - else you can." There was a brief pause, and Tony simply nodded, to which Loki's sharp retort was, " _Now_."

Without another glance, Tony turned and exited the room, leaving Bruce alone with the raven-haired man. Bruce stood immacutely still, his hands motionless at his sides as Loki continued pacing, occasionally casting a glance in the scientist's direction.

"This meeting will not end like our last," Loki murmured a few seconds later, gently rolling his scepter in his fingers as he confidently added, "I can assure you."

Internally, Bruce couldn't help but fondly remember the last time he - well, the Other Guy - had met the other-worldly man in the room. _Puny god,_ he thought, suppressing a light smirk for a moment before the humor quickly dissipated. _This time, though,_ his mind told him, _this time, he's not the one who's puny._ "You keep telling yourself that," Bruce replied finally, his voice barely above a murmur.

"I will." The next flick of Loki's eyes coldly dismissed Bruce's comment. "Do not think for a second, Doctor, that this will end similarly. Do not think for one moment that I am as naive as I once was; I recognize the mistakes I made and the ways you and your _team_ were able to take advantage of my own feeble vices, I see how you thought yourselves better than I. But this time," here, Loki gave a breathy, devious chuckle, "this time, the joke isn't on me, dear Doctor. This time, it is on _you._ "

"I fail to see how any of this is a joke," Bruce responded dryly. "It's a scheme, not a comedy. The only thing that's funny is that you think you're going to win."

"Oh?" Halting, Loki turned towards Bruce. "And what makes you say that?"

"Over-confidence." Bruce shrugged one shoulder, struggling to appear more nonchalant than he truly was. "Classic fatal flaw. Ever read any Shakespeare? Oddly enough, some of his work reminds me of you."

Loki huffed and ignored the comment, taking a few small steps forward. "Tell me, Dr. Banner, tell me where my fault is. I've again taken one of your own, one of your most precious, valuable, _irreplaceable_ , as mine. And now I have... you." He smiled sarcastically, quirking an eyebrow. "Tell me, how am I to fail again?"

Bruce balked. His mouth went dry with words he couldn't think to form, because really, Loki was _right._ The past month had already taken a toll beyond anything Bruce ever thought he could handle, and stupidly, so utterly stupidly had he made the decision to try and handle this himself without even giving the others the slightest of hints. He'd practically handed Loki the entire thing on a silver platter, and that was something he didn't think he'd ever be able to forgive himself for. But the god had demanded an answer, so Bruce opened his mouth to whisper four faint words he hadn't admitted at any point before, "Because I love him."

The room fell silent, and it was only moments before the serpentine smile slithered its way back onto Loki's lips. "Love," he repeated, the way his mouth formed the word giving it a twist of ugliness. "You mean to tell me that I'm going to lose to _love?_ "

Bruce chewed on the inside of his cheek, regretting the admittance. "I suppose that's how it often ends in the movies," he said dully.

"That is simply pitiful," Loki spat, advancing towards the doctor. " _Despicable,_ how you think that such a man, such a heartless, conceited, pretentious man, could be capable of love. Loving somebody like _you,_ nevertheless, loving somebody who is the literal embodiment of a savage beast. How is that possible, how could that ever be? Did you see the iciness in his gaze, the way his fingers closed around your throat only moments ago? Did you not listen when he, Anthony Stark, referred to you, Bruce Banner, as a monster? Is that love, Dr. Banner, is it? Oh no, no, no." Now, Loki was barely inches from where Bruce stood, his deadly scepter in hand. "I will send you back towards him, and I will let him show you first-handedly that twisted bond you claim to share; let him mercilessly destroy you in every way he knows you fear. And then, when this is all said and done, when he's demonstrated for you what really lies beneath, you can come back and confess to me how utterly misguided you were about your wretched _love!"_

When he was finished, Loki's heavy breath tickled against Bruce's face, and Bruce could feel the tip of the scepter pressed against his middle, but that faint, knifelike sting was by far the least of his worries.

How could he have been so _stupid?_


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay in updating. These past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic for me, but luckily I managed to get around to finishing this up for you guys. So I hope I haven't disappointed anyone too much, but nevertheless, enjoy! And also, I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season. :)

"Alright, run through: what's our plan once we land in Kolkata?" Before Natasha stepped into the passenger side of the bird she and the other two were flying, she looked expectantly at the two men.

"You take the south side of the city, Cap takes the west, then I take the east side and the slums," Clint responded confidently, hoisting himself up into the pilot's seat. "We keep in touch in case anyone finds anything."

"Then take the quickest means of transport to get there," Steve added, quite obviously.

Natasha nodded satisfactorily. "Exactly. And the biggest thing: if you run into danger, don't take it on alone. We all know who we're dealing with here."

"Yeah, Tasha," Clint replied lowly. "We know."

She shot a brief glance in the archer's direction, giving a single nod of her head before climbing in the passenger seat of one of S.H.I.E.L.D'S planes. It was only a moment before Clint hoisted himself into the pilot's seat and Steve took his place in the back, each drenched in a sheet of heavy silence.

Finally, after some brief preparations, they set off. This time, Clint pushed the plane over its normal speed limit, his face set in an apprehensive grimace.

**# #**

Only shortly after he'd finished speaking, Loki had exited the room, leaving Bruce in solitude. Closing with a rather loud thud, the door sealed Bruce in with the after-effects of Loki's words, but for some reason unknown, anger was the one emotion least present. In fact, it felt as if there wasn't any room left for him to feel angry.

Bruce clenched his jaw, leaning his forehead against the cool cement of the wall.

He'd come all this way for nothing, hadn't he?

Maybe Tony hadn't had a choice in Loki's doings, and maybe it was all an act of some sick possession scheme, but that was a scenario that Bruce just failed to believe. Tony wasn't there anymore. There was something else inside his body, something that had replaced whatever was there before, whether or not that was the love they claimed to share.

It was draining, honestly, and not a drop of the usual blazing rage flooded through Bruce's veins when he clenched his fist against the wall.

"Well don't you just look awful." The door slid open with a screech, and Tony's silhouette was visible in the doorway.

Bruce reluctantly dignified the comment with a brief glance in Tony's direction, catching the unusually blazing light of the arc reactor in the corner of his eye. He opened his mouth to say something but not a single word was formed.

"Look, Banner," Tony sighed in that familiar, exasperated tone. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

Pausing, Bruce took a moment to clear his throat. "And what ways are those?" he inquired, his voice a low, gravelly tone.

"The easy way is that you cooperate with us and don't be a nuisance," Tony began, "and that you don't try and push that dumb hero complex thing."

Bruce tightened his jaw in response to the latter half of Tony's reply. "...and the hard way?"

"You don't cooperate and we partake in actions that will certainly not be enjoyable on your part," Tony spat.

"Keep in mind that we're prepared for both."

Bruce turned to fully face Tony, his arms limp at his sides. He met the cold gaze that was set on him, giving a brief shake if his head. "What happened to you?" he asked softly, struggling to keep his voice from breaking.

At first, Tony's answer was nothing but a bout of eerie silence. But then, rather confidently, he said, "I realized."

"Realized _what_?" Bruce felt as though his voice was one of pleading, as much as he loathed to admit it. "What could you have possibly realized that made you... made you act like _this_?"

"Realized that I don't need that _team_ ," Tony sneered, the response almost immediate. "That I don't need you."

Bruce almost winced at the comment. That stung.

And of course now, at this terribly and utterly inconvenient moment, it was Bruce who was realizing - realizing that Loki had been right before about his pathetic notion of false love, and that now Tony too was right.

Unneeded.

A feeling only too familiar, and one that crept through Bruce's veins as Tony's fingers locked around the collar of his shirt, forcibly dragging him along to some other area in the dilapidated building.

**# #**

As soon as the plane landed in India, the three remaining team members split in their respective directions. Each were equipped with a wireless communication system lest they run into any sort of danger or, hopefully, they found a lead.

Natasha was the first to reach her general destination, disguising herself as bet she could in order to pass unnoticed in the city. The whole trip sent an odd sense of déjà-vu through her, and she tried to push it away as she walked through the crowded streets.

A rather long while had passed between their departure and where she stood now, and all throughout the time span, not a word had been uttered between the three. Natasha assumed that Clint and Steve were just as frustrated as she was, if not even more so, and she decided to take a breather and pause beside one of the many rather ruinous buildings.

"You guys found anything?" she murmured, clicking on her earpiece.

"Nothing worthwhile on my end," came Steve's delayed reply. "If he was here, he didn't leave any tracks. Barton?"

"Not so sure." Clint sounded rather distant. "It looks like he's passed through the slum areas - which is kind of a given, I mean, this is Banner we're talking about here - but there's nothing definitive. I think our best bet is probably the city. Easier to be discreet there."

"Yeah," Natasha scoffed. "Tell me about it." With a shake of her head, Natasha turned to observe the building behind her. The door looked as if it had been forced open, which wasn't particularly unusual for this area, but for some unknown reason it seemed just a hair suspicious. Gently, she pushed it the rest of the way open, taking a cautious step into what seemed like an empty facility.

As she advanced further into the building, Natasha felt as though her suspicions were being proved correct. With each step she took, she felt as if she was an inch closer to what she was looking for, and it wasn't long until she spotted what looked like a jacket crumpled in the corner of one of the many rooms, looking as if it'd been forcefully shed and tossed aside in a hustle.

Curiously, she moved towards the article of clothing and gently ran her hand over the worn, much broken-in tweed. It wasn't a garment that was common in an area like this, and when she thought 'tweed jacket', she thought of only one person - undoubtedly, this was Bruce's.

He was here. Or if he wasn't still, he clearly had been, and if anything, that gave her at least a small bit of a lead.

Draping the jacket over her arm, Natasha continued throughout the dim corridors. As she walked, she kept her ears perked, and was near one hundred percent sure she heard the faint sound of a voice from somewhere to her left.

"I don't know what you're asking me to do." As Natasha got closer, the voices magnified. "You just - you keep saying cooperate, but nothing about what I'm cooperating _with._ "

"You'll get your answers soon enough," another voice snapped, and it sounded awfully similar to that of Tony Stark. The tone of the reply silenced the other - which Natasha safely assumed was Bruce - and the footsteps faded towards their destination.

Hastily, Natasha followed expertly behind the two, silently clicking on her earpiece once more. "Barton, Rogers - south side of the city, there's a large, empty building with a kicked in door, approximately three stories high. Get down here as soon as possible," she whispered.

"Found something?" Clint asked.

"Yeah," Natasha replied, "Stark and Banner both."

**# #**

Soon enough, Tony had reached his destination, and he and Bruce stood in front of Loki yet again. The god wore a faint expression of smug amusement on his face as he watched Tony loosen his grip and leave Bruce standing in the middle of the room.

"Hmm." Loki's first words were somewhere between a purr and a chuckle. "Seems just like love, doesn't it?" That remark sparked a tiny bit of rage within Bruce's core, but it quickly dissipated.

"You just don't learn, do you?" Bruce said, forcing himself to sound more confident than he actually felt.

"Oh, I've learned." Loki shot a brief glance at Tony by his side. "I've learned more than enough."

A humorless smile appeared on Bruce's face, and he shook his head with a sad form of defiance. "You think you know," he replied. "You think you know, but you don't. You don't know what he's capable of."

"Oh?" Loki's eyebrows rose questioningly. "In who's favor?"

To that, Bruce had no reply. He would have liked to think that Tony's capabilities were in his favor, and in the favor of the rest of the Avengers, but at this point, he wasn't so sure. Honestly, at this point, he was just tired more than anything, and the whole scene felt hazy. Watching Tony was like a burning blur and Loki's words felt almost chaotic, and more than anything he just wanted to be back home in the tower, sleeping soundly until he was sure he'd comfortably wake beside his partner.

But in harsh reality, that wasn't the case, and the sight of Loki's triumphant expression just enforced the notion.

Loki advanced forward a few steps, and had opened his mouth to speak, but the only words that floated into the room were not from the god's silver tongue, but from a familiar female voice behind the three.

"I thought we'd taken care of you." Natasha's voice came as somewhat of a relief. "I'd think that you'd have learned from your previous... misfortunes."

"You're correct," Loki replied, the grin never leaving his face. "It's something I've derived from your own race - learn from your mistakes, yes? It's quite a simple notion."

"There's also two sides to that judgment." Natasha's arms were straight by her sides as she stepped forward to stand beside Bruce in the center.

"You see, Miss Romanoff, I don't play those games." Insidiously, Loki grasped his scepter with a chokehold and lifted it from his side, the sharp-ended tip aimed at the two across from him. It all happened very fast then - a wide blaze of electric blue tore through the air, but both Natasha and Bruce managed to roll out of its path in a matter of seconds. The blazes continued to soar from the end of the scepter and parts of the walls fell crumbling mercilessly at the impact. Bruce didn't quite see everything that was happening around him - the whole scene was almost like some sick daze - but then he managed to make out a flash of Natasha's fiery hair as she expertly tackled Loki from behind.

It was only a matter of time (seconds, minutes, hours? He didn't know) before the blurred forms of Clint and Steve burst into the room, and Bruce took a second to breathe a sigh of timid relief. _Good, he's outnumbered now._

But to his dismay, the chaos only escalated. However helpful or necessary, the addition of the other two only increased the violence, the electric blue flares now coupled with an onslaught of arrows and whatever else was flying around the area in a hurricane of catastrophe. Dazedly, Bruce tried to make sense of the whole thing, and internally debated on how to initiate his own role - _was now really the time to..._

A moment later, his thoughts were cut short when he caught sight of Tony lifting a gun.

Bruce halted, his eyes staring down the barrel from a distance. His body ceased all movement, and he found himself oblivious to the rest of the commotion. What the hell was this? Tony never used guns - but then he remembered that Tony wasn't the same, not anymore; he'd changed, been fiercely and forcibly _altered_ , and was now the type of man to pull a gun on the one he claimed to cherish only a short while before.

Slowly, cautiously, Bruce pulled himself to a standing position, keeping his eyes locked on the weapon. He couldn't quite comprehend the emotion coursing through his head; it wasn't fear, because he knew the consequences of his quarrels with guns all too well, and oddly, it wasn't relief either - and finally he settled on the fact that it had to be... betrayal.

Then Tony pulled the trigger.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just stopping by to drop off some more angst before the holidays, because the best way to spread Christmas cheer is sobbing loud for all to hear.  
> Okay, no, I don't think it's THAT bad ( I just really wanted to make a dumb Elf reference) but I hope you're all having a swell time, and I also hope you're continuing to enjoy the updates. Cheers!

It seemed as though there was nothing else in the room save Bruce and the bullet that whistled towards his head. Despite the oncoming doom, his eyes were still fixed on the man with the gun, the man who had pulled the trigger, and the man who was no longer the one Bruce had known as a friend and a lover only weeks ago.

For all he knew, it could have been ages before he finally felt the impact of the bullet in the center of his chest. The pain wasn't anything like he'd expected, in fact, he barely felt the deadly weapon pierce his skin - instead, the pain was unraveling the back of his head, the monster within him rumbling awake.

The change was surprisingly quick, and soon enough the gargantuan green form of the Hulk loomed over the five other puny figures that surrounded him. His eyes immediately zeroed in on Tony, the rough skin around them crinkling into a grimace. Slowly, heavily, he advanced forward with an outstretched arm, wrapping his fingers around Tony's middle. The gun clattered to the floor but Tony's expression stayed intact, and the Hulk let out a low grumble before turning and charging in the general direction of the exit, the stone walls cracking and falling astray on the floor.

The creature ran, tearing through parts of the city and slums until he finally reached a desolate patch of field. Roughly, he threw Tony down onto the dry dirt, watching the man cough and sputter upon the impact.

"What the hell?" Tony coughed, shooting a harsh glare at the monster roaming about before him. "What the hell is this, Banner?

The Hulk's only response was a scrutinizing glare in Tony's direction. When he set his gaze on Tony, the usual brief feeling of comfort was long absent, replaced with a blazing flame of hatred.

"Tin man not same," the Hulk growled. "Tony change. Tony _kill."_

"Damn straight I'm not the same." Tony huffed exasperatedly and wiped his hands on his pants. "Being naive doesn't suit me like it does you."

The Hulk stumbled a few heavy steps forward, his mind strangely torn between rage for the billionaire before him and reverence for the tiny human within the monster. "Tiny doctor not dumb," he uttered. "Tiny doctor want _old_ Tony."

Tony stood his ground before the monster, his eyes scrunched into slits. While the Hulk had stayed reasonably non-violent before, the way Tony's gaze sliced through him like daggers set him off. He let a barbaric growl rip from his throat and he charged forward at the man, once again wrapping his fingers around the human's structure.

Once Tony was trapped in his grip, he squeezed for a moment, then catapulted the body towards a tree. The Hulk didn't so much as flinch when he heard a sickening crunch from Tony's general direction, and something told him that the noise hadn't come from the tree.

Unlike before, Tony didn't make any movement to regain his composure.

Halfway between satisfied and horrified, the Hulk stood his ground with his eyes on the speck of Tony's motionless body. As he stared at the man, he could feel what was left of Bruce Banner penetrating the tendrils of rage that were wrapped so mercilessly around the Hulk's mind, and slowly, excruciatingly, he felt himself shrinking, every bone and muscle in his body decreasing down to average size with those usual repulsive noises he always dreaded. Finally, the monster was gone and Bruce's disheveled form was in its place, breathing heavily as a result of the change.

"Oh god," he muttered, "oh god, oh _shit_." Shakily, he pulled himself to his feet and pushed himself to walk in Tony's direction, managing to salvage some fabric from what was left of his pants.

Tentatively, he knelt down next to Tony, placing his hand on the man's chest. "God, damn... god damn it!" Bruce clenched his in the sparse grass, fighting the rising rage and horror in his gut. What had he done?

"Banner?" It didn't come as a surprise when Bruce heard Clint's voice behind him. The archer cautiously walked forward, stooping to kneel beside the doctor.

Bruce's face was set into a grimace. He'd known that at least one of the others would come after him, but at this point, he couldn't bring himself to even try to regain his composure.

"I just - the Other Guy," Bruce stammered in response. "The Other Guy threw him against a tree and... hurt him. I hurt him." Desperately, he laid his hand over the arc reactor and spread his fingers, letting the light filter through the openings. It was still a ghastly shade of white, but it then began to flicker, as if the battery life beneath it were slowly running dry.

"He's not dead." Clint spoke reassuringly. "You didn't kill him, Bruce. You didn't. He'll be alright." Finally, the flickering came to an end, and the only vestige of light left was a soft gleam of white, barely enough to break through Bruce's trembling fingers.

"Why do I let these things happen?" Bruce muttered under his breath, the tips of his fingers curling around the slightly raised casing of the arc reactor. "If I had just gotten my ass out of that bed and been in the kitchen, then... this wouldn't have - he wouldn't have been taken and I wouldn't have done this and just... idiot. Fucking _idiot_."

He huffed exasperatedly and sat back on his heels, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

Then he felt a cool, rough hand on his shoulder, and recognized the texture as Clint's. "Look, we're gonna get you both back to New York and we're going to fix this. Tasha and Steve are taking care of Loki, so he's not a worry. Tony's our priority, and we'll fix him. You know how we deal with priorities around here, Banner." It was a strange scenario for the archer, seeing the man who ironically always seemed like the force of calm ripping at the seams. "None of this is your fault, Bruce."

Clenching his jaw, Bruce tiredly pulled himself to his feet. "Yeah," he rasped, "I'll let you believe that." Despite his state of fatigue he was left in after the change, he reached down and managed to hoist the unconscious Tony into his arms, his jaded muscles straining under the effort.

"Would you like me to...?" Clint gestured towards Tony's limp body, noticing Bruce's apparent struggle.

"No." Bruce's reply was almost a snap. "I got him." His fingers tightened around Tony's body, as if he were afraid that the man would disappear if he were to let go. Clint nodded silently, turning around towards their destination, or at least where they hoped the others had stayed.

As they traveled, Clint couldn't help but keep a watchful eye on the scientist, noting his body language and the way he seemed to have a grip on Tony that suggested nothing less of a desperate, gruesome reunion that they both seemed to wish for, however melancholy it may be. After Bruce's mannerisms during the time post-Stark-kidnapping, this scene was nearly inevitable, and Clint realized that, yes, there was something there. Something that was sacred between only the two of them, and he realized that maybe Tony and Bruce hadn't told the others for one reason - they didn't _need_ to know. That special something wasn't a public affair, it was something for only the two of them, and something that had probably both initiated and hopefully saved this situation.

Clint smiled to himself, the simple gesture feeling somewhat foreign and rather out of place. Bruce hadn't spoken a word and Tony hadn't stirred even once throughout the trip, and Clint spotted Steve's stocky structure in the distance on the outskirts of the city.

"What's going on?" Steve asked, his eyes flickering between the three before him. "Is Stark...?"

"He's okay," Clint replied, sensing Steve's apprehensions. "Or at least he's going to be, somehow. What's the status on Loki?"

"Agent Romanoff is keeping guard on him. We're keeping him under maximum surveillance until Thor can travel down here to take care of him." Steve paused for a moment, turning his attention to Bruce's disheveled form. "Doctor Banner?"

Bruce cleared his throat, adjusting the way his arms anxiously clutched at Tony's body. "I'm fine," he said lowly. "I only hurt one person." His extensive skill in feigned resignation allowed him to mask most of the shame behind his eyes as he glanced down at the man resting tenderly in his arms.

Moments passed with no words exchanged, and finally Steve gave an understanding nod. "Let's head back, then. It'll be easier to focus on what we need to back home." Each of them silently agreed, gratefully allowing the flood of long-absent relief.

**# #**

Much of the trip back was spent in silence. They'd managed to load everybody into the plane, albeit not very comfortably, and it was only a matter of time that none of them bothered to count before they'd backtracked and reached the familiar surroundings of New York.

When they'd arrived, after notifying Fury of the results of the mission, Clint and Steve had agreed to store Loki elsewhere in order to devise a plan as to what to do with him. Meanwhile, Natasha had made the decision to stay back with Bruce, who'd wordlessly exited the plane and made a beeline for the closest thing to a hospital area, and Tony, who's lifeline was still in critical condition.

Now, Natasha was stationed noiselessly outside of the room Bruce had laid Tony in, her arms folded tensely over her chest. She could hear the clanks of metal instruments from within as Bruce worked, and if she leaned in close enough, his soft, frustrated murmurs of distress. Clenching her jaw, she finally pushed through the door, letting it fall shut softly behind her as she advanced into the room.

Not to her surprise, Bruce hadn't made any motion to indicate that he'd noticed her entrance. He simply stayed hunched over Tony's unconscious form, holding some sort of tool in a shaky hand with his eyes fixed directly on the still-flickering arc reactor. His brows were tightly knitted and Natasha could tell he was even more so fatigued than he had been on the plane.

"Bruce." Natasha paused when he didn't respond, her lips screwing to the side. "Bruce, stop this. Look at me."

Exhaling through his nose, Bruce shook his head and laid a hand on Tony's chest, his unwavering gaze focused on Tony's soft expression. "I don't know what Loki did to him," he finally said, struggling to keep his voice steady in spite of his obvious exhaustion. "Just - the vibranium that he had powering the reactor, it's - it's gone. Not a single trace. All that's left is that white light, and I can't seem to trace the power source for that either. It, just - none of this makes sense. _None_ of it."

Taking another step forward, Natasha fixed her own rigid gaze on Bruce's taut face. "Because you're not thinking straight. You need to take care of yourself first."

"That's not important right now," Bruce murmured through clenched teeth, his fingers curling over the arc reactor. "I need to figure this out. Maybe the..." His sentence tapered and he turned away, tracing the trail of one of the many wires scattered over the area.

"Yes, it _is_ important," Natasha insisted. "None of this is going to get any better until you -"

"I'm not a priority right now, Natasha!" Bruce finally snapped to look at her, a flame of rage burning behind his eyes. "My priority is fixing what I did to get him here, but the problem is that I don't know how! I can't even fix what's my own _fault!_ "

Natasha tensed, her hand discreetly sliding towards the gun in her belt. Measures were always taken in order to avoid Bruce's inner rage paying a visit, but if there was ever a time that those measures were drastically called for, it was this one - as if the whole scene wasn't disastrous enough to begin with, Natasha couldn't and didn't care to imagine what it would look like if Bruce let this get to him.

Before she could open her mouth to say a word, Bruce had sunken into the nearest chair, his fingers knotted through his tousled hair. Natasha approached tentatively, lowering herself to be eye-level with the man. "We're going to get out of this, Banner," she began faintly, "we're going to fix this. We're going to clean up this mess."

Bruce clenched her fist, pulling at the hair still bunched in his hand. Briefly, he shot a glance at Tony before casting his eyes down again, shaking his head hopelessly. "I don't know if I can."

"Not yet." Natasha sat back on her heels, her hand still hovering over the gun just in case. "You're probably overestimating it, Banner, and doing things you're not meant to."

At that, Bruce lifted his head to meet her gaze, his jaw tight. "Doing things I'm not meant to?" he repeated, his eyes narrowed. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Sensing the imminent uproar, Natasha leaned forward again, aloof and on guard. "You know exactly what I mean, Bruce, it's just a fragile situation -"

Swallowing thickly, Bruce quickly pulled himself to his feet. "If apparently I'm doing the wrong things to try and help him," he snapped, "then maybe I'm not supposed to." He gripped Tony's fingers in his own for the slightest of moments, but then his grasp faltered, and he found himself turning and walking from what he'd thought was worth the strife.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Natasha decided it was probably best to let Bruce leave on his own.

After all, he'd left of his own accord only a few days ago and managed to lead them to Tony, however grim the circumstances were, and maybe, she thought, maybe if he left on his own this time as well he'd be able to find something that could potentially help what was left of the problem.

Bruce Banner was not a shy and passive man. She'd known that from the instant they'd met. If anything, he was completely the opposite, but decided to put on a disguise, appearing as somebody who another could walk all over if they took the right steps. Underneath all of that, he was a stubborn, raging ball of fire that longed every moment to be let loose, but unfortunately for the humble doctor, that fire was released in a way that wasn't at all ideal, and through his eyes, quite despicable.

Sighing, Natasha turned her gaze towards the unconscious Tony. He too was a stubborn one (but truthfully, most of them found Tony's kind of _stubborn_ synonymous with _pretentious asshole_ ) but the difference between him and Bruce was that Tony felt the need to flaunt it, and didn't make the tiniest of efforts to hide it. That being said, it didn't mean that Tony didn't hide behind anything, because it was quite obvious to her that he did - unlike Bruce, Tony used the façade of snark and narcissism to mask what was really beneath it all.

And despite how often she dismissed these types of things, and how loathsome she'd become of even the mention of it, it couldn't be denied in this predicament: opposites attract.

Natasha stood to quietly walk towards Tony's bed, gently placing her hand on the side. He was just so still, cold, _lifeless_ \- and strangely, Natasha felt a pang of worry for the genius. It wasn't completely unusual, because by all means she'd certainly been worried for members of the team on other occasions, but it wasn't something she liked. She'd spent so long and worked so hard at detaching herself, at distancing herself from ties that would bond her to others, because as she'd always been taught: the only purpose those ties served was to _get in the way._ Get in the way of missions, straight lines of thought, got in the way of _her_ and what she absolutely needed to get done.

But this wasn't only worry for the man on the bed before her. This was also worry for the man who'd left the room only moments ago, the man who had ties to Tony so much stronger than she did. She was bonded to both of them, not in blood but in league, and that was something that enabled her to see just how much (not exactly, but enough) Bruce felt he needed to fix this.

So she made the decision to stay. Normally, she would have found someone else to take the responsibility of watching over Tony, but somehow this time felt different. She removed her hand from the bed and lowered herself back into the chair.

It was going to be a long day.

**# #**

Bruce walked briskly away from the room, muttering inaudibly under his breath. He wasn't sure where he was going or what he was doing, but he hoped that whatever the outcome, it was for the _right reasons_ , as Natasha had so eloquently put it.

Huffing exasperatedly, Bruce smiled grimly to himself. He should have known. He should have known it would end up this way, with Tony hurt at the expense of Bruce's own faults - that's how it always ended, didn't it? Always. He always ended up hurting somebody else, somebody he cared about, whatever the motive. And every time he tried to fix it, tried to turn it all around and patch it up with a nice little band-aid, it blew up right back in his face. He wasn't _supposed_ to fix things. That was the bottom line.

He lived to screw things up, hurt every party involved, and fail to mend it - then, every time at his own expense, it was ultimately everybody's loss.

Bruce was a mess, and he knew it.

Like every time before, Bruce stopped to contemplate running. Running was always his last resort; it always seemed to work the best, and if he ended up lucky, it was never long until the people he'd damaged would forget him. But this time, he didn't want to run. He couldn't. Tony was much too important to flee from, especially after the things he had been through, not to mention what they had been through together. Fleeing always left Bruce with guilt, that was a given - but this sort of guilt, this _magnitude_ of guilt, wasn't one he could force himself to live with.

However, dealing with the shame left from what he had already done was another matter. _Don't do that to yourself, Big Guy,_ he could practically hear Tony's voice in his head, _don't take the blame off Reindeer Games and put it on yourself._

And logically, Bruce knew the voice was right. Taking in a few calming breaths, he slowed his walking pace and eventually found himself in the foyer, spotting Steve sitting wordlessly in a chair by the wall.

"Hey, Cap," Bruce said, halting a few feet behind the chair. "Where is Loki being held?"

"Second floor," Steve responded dryly. "In that maximum-strength, unbreakable cage type thing. The one they rebuilt after..."

" _After._ Yeah, I know. That one." Bruce nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thanks, Cap." Then he walked away, back across the room and towards the stairwell. Minutes later he'd reached the second floor, the echo of his footsteps ricocheting off the walls and through his ears. The hallways were almost like a maze, but he finally found what he was looking for, standing behind the protection of the corner for just a moment.

This was a fruitless effort, and Bruce knew it so - but to his dismay, and probably the others' too, this was what he'd been reduced to. Hesitantly, he stepped out into the doorway and silently strode towards the glass casing in the center of the room. And though he hadn't even seen the original, the scene felt sickeningly familiar.

"Few people can approach me and go unnoticed." The cold smoothness to Loki's voice sent a shiver of revolt down Bruce's spine. "You're not one of them."

"I wasn't trying to," Bruce replied, and he could detect a hint of a fatigued sigh in his own voice, as if he was not only tired of guessing and hoping and failing, but just tired of living. "I don't even have an interest in you. I just want Tony back."

"You have him." Loki shrugged indifferently, his palms held facing forward in mock surrender. "Although it seems as if you've done more damage that what I had originally intended."

"Than you'd intended?" Bruce repeated incredulously, straining to keep his arms limp and callous by his sides. "And what exactly had you _intended_ for him?" He subconsciously balled his fingers into a fist by his side.

Clasping his hands behind his back, Loki paced to and fro across the enclosed area. "I broadened his horizons," he responded nonchalantly. "I simply aided in the realization of his formerly ignorant mentality. That was my only intention." Slowly, insidiously, the familiar serpentine smile slithered across his features.

"Then it looks like your intentions got a little bit out of hand," Bruce remarked, his tone a deep, rumbling growl from deep in his throat. "Your intentions landed him in a hospital bed. Whatever you did to him rendered the arc reactor practically useless. It's because of your intentions that he's almost _dead!_ " In the front of his chest, Bruce could feel his heart begin to palpitate, the fists at his sides growing tighter, and he swallowed thickly, pushing desperate pleas like _no, not now, don't let this happen now,_ and _calm down, you know this is exactly what he wants,_ through his haggard brain.

"No, no." Loki's eyes were like daggers, the kind that killed slowly, each second brimming with the screaming flame of pain that slithered mercilessly through its victim's veins. "It's because of the monster. Or, rather... is it because of the man behind the beast?"

To that, Bruce made no reply.

"Doesn't it just burn you to know that _you're_ the reason for the suffering of your beloved?" Loki inquired, pausing a second for the answer he knew wasn't going to come. "You could have stopped all of this before it began, Doctor. You could have spared the time and fervor of each of your wretched colleagues if only you had sacrificed for him first." His eyebrows rose in mock indifference, then narrowed a moment later. "But that's not what monsters do. You'll beg them for forgiveness, you'll plea on your knees, but they won't grant it. They won't want _you_."

Jaw clenched, Bruce kept his face turned toward the floor, concealing his painfully mindful expression. "You think I don't know that?"

Loki's treacherous sneer only widened at that. "I know you do."

Wordlessly, Bruce turned his eyes towards Loki, fighting the repugnant hue of green he could feel threatening to flood over his skin. The sneer on the god's face was only deepening Bruce's resentment, and he reluctantly turned away, shaking his head and breathing heavily as he exited the room.

His footsteps were quick and untimely as Bruce fled through the corridors back towards Tony's room. A thousand and one things were running throughout his mind, mentally questioning and analyzing Loki's riddle-laden words. To Bruce's (and probably everyone else's) disliking, Loki had a way of slithering deeper meaning into what sounded like an obvious statement - of course the Hulk and Bruce both owed their faults to Tony's current condition, and Bruce had persuaded himself of that all too well, but that seemed much too blatant, didn't it?

Undoubtedly, Loki was a clever bastard, and his deceitful, cunning ways almost left Bruce ready to simply stop grasping at the improbable and sacrifice what little he had left.

Suddenly, the doctor halted in his tracks.

_'... if only you had sacrificed for him first.'_

Sacrifice. Of course. That was what Loki had always wanted - he'd always aimed towards his victims making the sacrificial bargains that would benefit only him and leave the others hanging desperately in the midst. But at this point, with Tony's life on the line, Bruce couldn't possibly care less what he had to give up in order to hopefully guarantee the well-being of his significant other.

What he needed to surrender though, Bruce was not sure. Was it physical, or something that wasn't entirely tangible? Judging by the way Loki had worded his statements, Bruce came to the conclusion that it was probably both; there wasn't any way that it would have been made so easy. Surely it wasn't _purely_ physical, and even if it was, it inevitably came with a price.

Pushing back through the door to Tony's room, Bruce made a quiet attempt at clearing his crowded mind. With an apologetic look, he fixed his gaze on Natasha who - rather surprisingly - was still present in the room. "I... I'm sorry," he atoned, and regrettably, he felt that was all he ever seemed to do around Natasha. Apologize. "You were right. It's a... fragile situation."

"Very," Natasha responded in a rather monotonous tone, eyeing the physicist carefully. "What exactly have you been up to, Banner?"

Hesitantly, Bruce stepped forward and lowered himself into the seat beside Tony's bed once more. "I spoke to Loki," he admitted. "I don't quite know what got into me when I did, but... he ended up saying something about a sacrifice, something about 'if only I had sacrificed for him first,' and it got me thinking."

"Doesn't everything?" Natasha quirked an eyebrow, adding a tidbit of well-needed wit to the conversation.

There was a hint of a smirk present on Bruce's face before it quickly dissipated. "I was thinking it had something to do with the arc reactor, or at least something along the lines of it," he began, his voice barely above a wavering murmur. "It's pretty apparent that the Vibranium that allowed it to function is gone suddenly, so there has to be something else that's going to power it - Loki wouldn't kill somebody that he finds so... useful. Whatever I - or we, probably I - have to sacrifice is obviously something that's going to save his life, but not without some sort of stake."

"And you're thinking it's something you have to supply him with?"

"Well, Loki did refer to me directly." Bruce paused to shrug one shoulder. "So... yes, I suppose so."

Natasha shifted on her feet, caught deep in thought. "It can't be artificial, then. He wouldn't let us take the easy way out with that one," she reasoned. "It has to be something only you have. Something that's burdened with repercussions."

"Ha, well," Bruce scoffed, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "There's certainly enough of those to choose from."

Natasha let the comment slide past as she turned her direct gae back to Bruce. "Would you be willing to hand one of those over?" she questioned lowly. "Would you give him one of those consequences to deal with?"

Bruce balked. Would he? Would he really sink as low as to transfer one of his own deadly imperfections to Tony, however it may appear to benefit him? No, no, because in the end, it wouldn't benefit him, not one bit - sure, it may save his life now, buy him just a tad bit more time, but at the finish line when all was said and done, the truth was that Tony would be burdened with one of the things Bruce had always tried so desperately to conceal from their relationship.

Inhaling a long breath, Bruce leaned forward in his chair. "I don't know," he said finally, anxiously biting down on his bottom lip. "I don't know if I can do that to him. It's a lose-lose deal either way." Tentatively, he reached a hand forward and gently twined his fingers with Tony's limp ones. He knew Natasha was watching closely, and he knew that he'd probably said and done many things that had already blown his cover, but at this point, he couldn't find even an ounce within him that cared. At this point, it was life or death, love or loss, and there was a sentiment trickling through him that felt as if the debilitating grasp was all he had left to lose.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me start off with saying this: I'm a writer, not a scientist. In fact, I'm pretty awful at science. So I apologize for any scientific/medical inaccuracies, but hey, there's a reason why I shouldn't be playing around with chemicals.
> 
> Secondly, as you may have noticed, I've adjusted the fic to be on a bi-weekly updating schedule. I hate to have to do it, but things have gotten a bit busy in the outer-net and it just seems to work better. Thirdly, I have no clue what I was even doing with this chapter, so make of it what you will. And lastly, I hope you enjoy, and I sincerely appreciate every little bit of feedback and support you guys give. Thank you!

"How is he?"

For the past few seconds, minutes, hours (hell, who was counting anymore) the ambiance of the room had been solemn, deep in thought, and utterly silent. Bruce had lowered his head, his fingers sill twined through those of the unconscious man on the bed, while Natasha had leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, her eyes on the floor but her mind some place completely different.

Steve cleared his throat. "How is he?" he repeated, clasping his hands behind his back, letting his eyes roam over the three other beings present. "Hasn't woken up, I assume."

"No." Bruce's answer was halfway between cold and concerned. "Hasn't so much as flinched."

Stifling a sigh, Steve paced forward, leaning his shoulder against the wall in an attempt to bring at least a tidbit of relaxation and normality to the room. "You two look awfully... preoccupied," he commented, stealing another glimpse at the doctor and the assassin.

"Banner spoke to Loki." Natasha straightened, running her palms over the fabric that covered her knees. "Something about a sacrifice. Something that could potentially help Stark out of this."

"Sacrifice?" Steve asked incredulously, but then exhaled hopelessly a second later. "Well, we all know that Loki talks in riddles."

"I don't think this one is a trick, Cap." Reluctantly, Bruce pulled his hand away from Tony and leaned back in his chair. "I think it's a scheme. Loki knew it wouldn't take us long to find Tony and get him back. He had to find something to prolong all of this, because it's not over yet." He sighed. _Yet,_ he thought, _it's not over yet. Eventually, it will be over. Eventually, things will be normal again._

"Then what more could we possibly do?" Steve morosely shook his head, following Bruce's gaze to Tony's eerily still body on the bed, his only movements the shallow rising and falling of his chest as he breathed, slowly and achingly. "He's been out cold for a day and a half. The power of his arc reactor is being depleted by whatever Loki put into him to replace it, and it's not like we can just _make_ more of that. This isn't just a psychological issue. He's been warped, Banner, both inside and out. I don't see how 'sacrificing' something is going to save his physical life." Though his words were cold, his eyes held an acute sadness and worry.

Swallowing thickly, Bruce chewed on the inside of his cheek and turned his head to face Steve. "What are you trying to say?" he inquired lowly, taking a few calming breaths when he felt his heart rate and discontent begin to rise. "You're saying we should just _give up?_ "

Steve raised his hands, palms forward defensively. "I wasn't suggesting that at all, Dr. Banner -"

"You better not be." Bruce's voice was barely above a low rasp, somewhere between a snarl and a defeated whisper. "I don't care how difficult this is going to be or what I have to do, but I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to just give up on this. I'm not giving up on _him_." When he was finished speaking, Bruce was on his feet, defiantly facing the blonde soldier.

"Bruce," Steve said gently, lowering his arms. "I'm not asking you to give up on him. I'm just asking you to look at this logically."

"Do you think I haven't done that already?" Bruce sighed hopelessly. "Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, Rogers."

"I know." Steve nodded in agreement. "But taking Loki seriously seems just a bit too desperate."

"No such thing," Bruce muttered to himself, tearing his gaze away from Steve and letting it drop to the floor instead. Steve had opened his mouth to reply, but then took a moment to let his eyes linger on Bruce, then on Tony, and back again, and decided that staying silent at this point was probably for the best. Behind him, the door creaked open suddenly and in walked Clint, dressed casually in a burgundy t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

The archer hesitated and looked carefully at each person, noticing the way Bruce was standing in a foreboding slouch and Steve's rather defensive stance. Each of them had a vastly different expression lining their face, but not one was anything even remotely at ease. "Jeez," he commented. "Who died?"

Natasha shot him a warning glance. "Not funny, Clint."

"Sorry." He gave a humorless smirk. "Fury wanted an update. Anything new?"

"As far as Stark's condition, no," Natasha replied. "But Loki did say that it'll take some sort of sacrifice in order to change that condition. I think we're onto something with that."

"Sacrifice?" Clint exhaled through his nose in a brief scoff. "Sounds like some kind of bullshit bloodbath."

Bruce, meanwhile, had only been half-listening to the conversation as he'd heard most of it before, but Clint's last words had struck a chord within him. "Bloodbath," he repeated under his breath, suddenly plunged deep into thought. "Blood. That's it. He meant blood." He looked expectantly at the other three, waiting for their approval.

"Stark's blood?" Steve questioningly raised an eyebrow.

"My blood." Bruce's words seemed to drop an anvil of heavy, stunned silence on the room, and for a brief moment, even he was hesitant to break it. "Loki did say it was me who had to sacrifice for Tony, didn't he?"

Each one of the others exchanged a befuddled glance, then Natasha broke away and have Bruce a concerned gaze. "You know better than anyone the risks of that, Banner. You know what that will do to him."

"But isn't that the entire point?" Bruce remarked, absentmindedly beginning to pace back and forth a few feet, though still keeping within inches of the bed beside him. "He wants us to balk at this. It's not supposed to be an easy decision; Loki knows that it has to be something we're all reluctant to do. Doesn't it just make _sense?_ The risks and repercussions that go along with this? Doesn't it all just tie in?"

They paused to consider for a second or two, and finally, Clint was the first to ask what they'd all been wondering. "But how do you even know he was talking about blood?" he asked slowly, skeptically.

"It's classic." Bruce shrugged, and if the situation weren't so grim, he would have almost sounded excited. It all seemed to wrap up into something similar to one of the many equations he found himself hunched over throughout the days and nights, how it all looked so ominous and complicated from the outside, but underneath, was really just a simple series of logicalities. It made sense. And a part of him set on criticizing his own actions wondered how he'd ever overlooked something that felt so familiar. "His word choice says it all. ' _Sacrifice.'_ Loki isn't as complex as we all think he is. Everything he says is basically just one simple equation disguised as something that _looks_ devious and complicated... really, he's just your classic, old-fashioned villain. Every fairy tale needs one."

Clint paused to consider, his lips screwing to the side in thought. "He's probably right," he concluded, directing the comment towards Steve and Natasha. "There's only so much we can do at this point."

"That doesn't make it any less dangerous," Natasha countered. "We have to look at the risk here - and we all know what that is."

"The radiation, I know." Bruce stifled a sigh, rolling up his sleeves. "Again, though, Loki knows that. He knows all of this. He _wants_ this. What's better for the bad guy than to see his adversaries struggle over whether to let their comrade die on his own or possibly induce the dying themselves?" It wasn't the first time he had said the word - _dying_. In fact, he felt like he'd been saying it over and over for the past day, but this was the first time he actually believed it. Taking a glance at Tony's body on the bed, he really believed it this time; he was dying. And it probably wasn't long until the present would become the past and 'dying' would become 'dead,' and at that point, this entire struggle would seem to have been for nothing. Tony would be gone, perished, done for, all at the expense of his team - friends, people he _trusted_ (and Tony didn't trust many people) - and Bruce didn't think he could let himself continue living with such a tremendous burden. At last, he found himself at a loss for words and for thought, and he once again lowered himself into the chair beside the bed, tiredly running a hand over his face.

"And if it doesn't work?" Steve asked gently, folding his arms over his chest. "You have to realize that this all could be a scheme. He could be tricking us into thinking this is the solution." He said the last words with a kind of fearful sadness in his voice, letting his eyes stray to Tony for a moment. Steve, too, almost couldn't bear to think of the kind of toll Tony's possible demise could take on the team, let alone himself. Though he and the billionaire often spent most of their time together disagreeing over something always rather silly, and despite the somewhat mutual discomfort between the two, Tony was a _friend_ , and Steve only wanted to take the most careful measures regarding the genius' life.

Bruce hesitated just as he was beginning to stand again. "It could be," he agreed half-heartedly, swallowing thickly. "But it's worth a shot, I'd think." Before any of the others could object (which, strangely, they didn't - but what was even left to be said?) he stood from his seat, briskly making his way towards the small but sufficient medical cabinet on the corner of the room. With a brief hesitation, he opened the drawer and rummaged around, eventually finding the sterile syringe he'd been looking for.

Warily, he glanced over his shoulder, meeting the concerned, hawk-like gazes of his three conscious team members. "You all might want to take a step back. For... precautionary reasons," he warned rather needlessly, because each one seemed to have already distanced themselves as soon as they had figured out what Bruce was after. Bruce took note of this and simply nodded, turning back to his work. Swiftly, he cleansed a small patch of skin on the inside of his upper forearm, then prepared the needle and with a quick, unneeded breath, put it to his arm. He didn't so much as flinch when the needle pierced his skin, nor did he wince as he watched the thick, dark scarlet blood flow into the barrel, rising as it filled bit by bit, staining the transparent casing with a gruesome shade of crimson.

When he pulled the needle from his arm, Bruce paused to examine the substance he held delicately in his hand. Danger. The liquid inside that syringe was absolute, pure danger, and it was the same substance that slithered through his veins every second, supplying his being with an over-abundance of rage, hatred, and destruction, and only an adequate dose of life. He removed his gaze from the syringe and set it on Tony, sighing. Now, it wasn't just Bruce who would have to carry the burden of this 'terrible privilege', so to speak, but it was now going to be something they both carried on their backs, yet another repercussion of the relationship he'd been wary of since the beginning. He knew it was likely to end in some sort of destruction, but never like this, and he mentally scolded himself for letting something like this nearly tear asunder not only them, but the team as well.

But maybe, if this dangerous and quite ridiculous idea worked, things would begin to make sense once more. Two wrongs don't make a right, and Bruce knew that just as well as the next person, however this type of danger, this risk, could maybe throw off the balance and steer things back in their respective directions.

Carefully, he transferred the blood to another syringe, watching for any stray drops that could have possibly escaped for sake of the others' safety. When he turned around, he gave each of the team members a hopeful glance, then bent over the bed to examine the arc reactor that still flickered that ghastly shade of white every now and then.

"And how exactly do you plan on getting that in there?" Clint inquired, having been watching Bruce's every move since he'd drawn the blood.

"There must be an opening somewhere that allows the Vibranium to be inserted," Bruce responded, only half attentive to the inquiry. "I was planning on putting it in there." Tentatively, he slipped the arc reactor out of its place in Tony's chest, holding it gently on his palm as he examined it thoroughly. Sure enough, after much cautious searching, he found a way to pry open a small area that would allow him to insert the substance. "Well, here goes," he murmured, more to himself than to the others.

As much as he was tempted, Bruce didn't hesitate for so much as a second before he fed the tip of the syringe into the opening, injecting the blood into the core of Tony's lifeline. He didn't breathe and he didn't blink, watching as the faint bluish-white colour was gradually replaced by a trickling sea of red, creating a serpentine swirl of scarlet within the artificial heart. Time seemed to slow as Bruce watched the blood flood around the inside of the device, eventually picking up what seemed like a pulsing pattern, almost as if it were Tony's actual heart beginning to function again, but it was barely a moment before it halted, seeming to fall stagnant. Almost hopelessly, he softly slipped the device back into its designated space, stifling a devastated sigh. _Of course._

Strangely, though, as soon as the arc reactor clicked into place, the colour began to flash and flicker again. At first, the familiar beacon of white light blazed blindingly from the small circle, illuminating most of the room. Then it faded to a dull, pulsing red for the briefest of moments, pushing and pumping the radiation throughout the core. Lastly, it flickered to its ordinary electric blue, shifting hastily to an almost sickening shade of gamma green, before finally settling on a strange shade of azure between the two.

The four Avengers were stunned into silence. Even Bruce, the unfortunate scientist who had thought he'd seen everything there was to see, hadn't been expecting _that,_ and found himself hesitant to even approach Tony, who's breath already seemed to be growing heavier.

Eventually, Clint cleared his throat and disturbed the quiet. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Yeah," Bruce breathed, setting the syringe aside to free his hands. "I'll be damned." He focused the entirety of his attention on Tony, watching the rapid rise and fall of his chest continually increase in pace. Bruce took a seat on the edge of the bed, taking Tony's hand in one of his own, feeling the man's fingers twitch softly in his grasp. He kept his anxious gaze on Tony's face, searching for any sign of movement or consciousness, and just when his face and faith began to fall, Tony's eyelids gently fluttered. The movements were painfully slow, but eventually the genius' eyes had opened, albeit heavy-lidded, and he let his fatigued, flaccid brown gaze rest on the man beside him.

And for the first time in weeks, the smile that pulled at Bruce's lips was something genuine.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay, guys. Unfortunately, life doesn't stop for anything, not even my undying love for fictional characters.  
> I hope this is worth the extra wait, and as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Coconut and metal.

They were tastes much too familiar, tastes of emptiness, destruction, and renewal. Tastes that flooded his mouth each time he found himself in some sort of twisted, less-than-ideal situation, one that left him in metaphorical pieces and then, oddly yet obviously, renewed him each time.

But this time, it was metal - _only_ metal. There wasn't even the faintest trace of the stale flavor of coconut anywhere that he could find, and the bitter taste of metal left his mouth sickened and very, very dry.

And it was silent. Everywhere. _What kind of joke was this? Bastard,_ Tony thought, swallowing thickly in an attempt to salivate his mouth. _This isn't funny._ This had to be some sort of trick - surely Loki wouldn't have given him up so easily, not after those weeks upon weeks of whatever that was; torture, servitude, whatever. Tony honestly couldn't care to remember, but the room around him looked awfully familiar from what he could see out of his groggy eyesight.

Then he felt a bout of warm pressure against his hand, a squeeze that was halfway between comforting and desperate.

"... _ony_?" He scrunched his eyes out of pain. Ouch. Loud voices were not helping at the moment. " _Come on. Open your eyes for me."_ The voice was softer now, seemingly less demanding. But he could barely tell where it was coming from - somewhere to the left, maybe? Perhaps it was the voice of the same person who still had a firm grip on his hand, the person whose weight caused the side of the bed to sink beside him. Who even was... _Bruce_. It had to be Bruce.

There was only a brief moment of hesitation after the realization before Tony found himself pummeled with guilt, despite that he was straining to even remember what was left of the few memories of the past several weeks. Whatever he had done, it couldn't have been anything pleasant and was most certainly something regrettable and unforgiving, but... Bruce was _here_. He hadn't run off in a hustle, uneager to forgive Tony's actions; he was here, sitting on the bed beside him, holding his hand. Bruce was here. He was forgiving.

With some difficulty, Tony managed a small sigh. He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve Bruce, he never had and never would, and he found himself struggling to keep his eyes shut for sake of the shame with which he was suddenly awash.

"Guess it didn't work, Banner." He recognized the voice as Steve's, holding a strangely forlorn tone.

"No." The strain was obvious in Bruce's reply. "He just woke up a few seconds ago. It worked. Give him a moment."

Again, Tony let out a faint, distressed sigh. They were all watching his every move, he was painfully aware of it, and he reluctantly decided to open his eyes again and face it.

 _Ugh, bright._ Groggily, he moved a hand to his face, rubbing his eyes. For a second, he questioned how he even had the energy to do so, but quickly let the question dissipate, concluding that it didn't really matter anyways.

Once his eyes had adjusted to the light (which was unnaturally bright, like some sort of surgical lamp - god, what the hell had they been doing?) he let his gaze roam over each of his fellow team members - friends, really - taking notice of how not one of them took a breath or spoke a word. Finally, he reached Bruce, who was still perched beside him on the bed, holding one of Tony's hands in both of his own.

The sensation of the four pairs of eyes watching him intently began to make Tony uncomfortable after a moment, and he attempted to clear his throat. "What happened?" he asked finally, discreetly giving Bruce's hand a soft, reassuring squeeze.

"Don't tell me you don't remember any of that." Natasha was the first to reply, and her voice held an unfamiliar twinge of concern.

Tony's brow furrowed. "Some," he mumbled. He made an attempt at pulling himself into a sitting position, leaning into Bruce for support. As he did so, a pang of pain shot through his chest, rendering him shocked and motionless for a second before he made a show of looking down towards the circle of light in his chest, his eyes widening in both surprise and in horror at what he found.

"What happened?" he repeated, this time much more urgently. "I want one of you to tell me why the hell my arc reactor -" His voice cracked against the strain, and he swallowed thickly in an attempt to compose himself further. "- is _green_."

Each of the others exchanged a worrisome glance until the majority let their gazes settle on Bruce. The scientist drew in a breath, pressing his lips into a thin line. "I took precautions, so I don't want you to worry," he began hesitantly, his gaze roaming elsewhere.

"The fact that you took precautions for something you won't tell me about is already pretty worrying," Tony croaked, raising his eyebrows suspiciously. He craned his neck to get a better look at what kind of expression Bruce was wearing, and was disappointed to find that it was almost completely neutral. _Damn you and your monotonous face, Banner,_ he thought, _damn you._

Almost as if he'd heard Tony's thoughts, Bruce turned his head directly towards his partner on the bed. "When we'd got you back here, the levels of Vibranium powering the arc reactor were dangerously low," he responded, his voice low and quick, like the tiresome and uniform tone of a doctor diagnosing a patient. "Nearly empty, actually. It wasn't long until it had completely depleted and we needed another way - another substance - that would suffice as a supplier for the power, and, well - the only thing that seemed logical and the only thing that _works_ so far is, ah, blood. My blood." He lightened his tone towards the end, hoping to make the entire idea seem at least a little less ominous.

Tony blinked, unsure of how to absorb that information. "How much did you put in?"

"Only a little -"

" _How much,_ Bruce?"

"Just a vial." Bruce sighed, tightening his grip in Tony's hand. "I told you, I was being as safe as possible while still making sure it would work. I only put in ten milliliters."

" _Only_ ten milliliters?" Tony swallowed thickly, pulling his hand away. He couldn't even begin to wrap his head around any of this - Vibranium, _gone_ , blood, green, _gamma,_ arc reactor, _blood..._ It was ridiculous, and it was outrageous, and as much as Tony loathed to admit, it was ludicrously terrifying. "Ten milliliters is a hell of a lot when the blood is infected with gamma radiation, Banner."

Bruce averted his gaze, setting it on his hands that he had clasped in his lap. "I know," he admitted. "I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't the last resort, Tony."

"He saved your life, Stark," Steve cut in, "the least you could do is thank him."

Having nearly forgotten that the other three were still present, Tony jumped a bit at the remark. He turned his head and shot a cold glance in Steve's direction. "We need the room."

Steve nodded and held up a hand in surrender, followed by Natasha and Clint as he turned to exit the room.

Once they were alone, Tony turned back to face Bruce, who had reluctantly stood from his seat on the edge of the bed. "You can't be telling me there wasn't another way," he said lowly. "You could have just synthesized more Vibranium. I have procedures, Banner, explicitly written _steps_ for it -"

"You were running out of time." Bruce's interruption was uncharacteristically quick, and even somewhat harsh. "It would have been over before I had the time and mindset to do that. _You_ would have been over."

"Don't act like you're not a goddamned genius who could have figured it out." Tony's reply was cold, cutting.

Exasperatedly, Bruce turned around and leaned his palms against the bedside table. Great. Tony was pissed. Of _course_ he was pissed, Bruce thought, he couldn't have expected any other response - except that he did. Perhaps not really expected, but hoped. Very falsely hoped, that is, and Bruce mentally scolded himself for acting so stupidly.

"I don't know what you want me to say," he said finally, glancing at his partner out of the corner of his eye. "Would you have preferred that I just let you die? Do you really want Loki to have that satisfaction?"

"He gets more out of it this way." Tony's own words even stung himself. "He gets more satisfaction out of watching you kill me instead." He found that he was growing increasingly frustrated with himself, unable to pinpoint exactly how he felt. Tired, somewhat, tired of arguing and misery and pain, and a small part of him felt just the tiniest bit guilty. But all of that was trumped by a devastating mass of anger, a kind of rage that flooded its way through his veins from the top of his skull to the tips of his toes, and one he was never aware he even had the capacity to endure.

_This had to be what Bruce felt like._

And, god, was he terribly correct. That rage coursing through Tony's body resonated directly into Bruce, sending a splitting bout of pain down his skull to his spine, and rippling his muscles that were already tense. He found himself gripping the table, taking in deep, shaky breaths in an attempt to bring even the smallest ounce of peace within himself.

Consequences. He'd known when this started that were going to be awful, agonizing, and ruthless consequences.

Leave it to Bruce Banner to come crashing into those so quickly.

"Okay, okay, Tony, please," he rasped, somehow finding his voice. "Please. Do me a favor. You don't have to agree with me or forgive me or whatever, just, please... Don't. Get. _Angry."_


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so this took ages to write. But on the bright side, there's some nice firsts in this chapter, like some happiness (gasp) and Thor (finally) and even some sexytimes (double gasp), so I hope that's exciting to people other than me.
> 
> As usual, I hope all of you lovely people enjoy this update. The feedback and love I get from this fic is wonderful and absolutely means the world to me, so thank you so very much for sticking around! Enjoy!

Tony narrowed his eyes in what could have been hostility.

"I have every right to be _angry_ ," he spat, his voice brimming with a kind of hurt that he tried desperately to conceal.

"I'm not saying you don't have the right." Bruce made an attempt to straighten himself and regain some of his composure. "I'm just asking you not to be, because -" He hesitated. Was now really the time to mention it? Tony was not an idiot, far from it, actually, and he had to know just as well as Bruce did that there was going to be some sort of repercussion. However, Bruce hadn't expected said repercussion to reveal itself so soon, and part of him hoped that what he was feeling was merely the gargantuan side effect of his own rage and that it had no ties to what was running through Tony's system.

"Because why?" The venomous tone that that been coursing through Tony's voice was suddenly absent, replaced by what sounded like genuine curiosity and even concern. However, he still held himself in a guarded stance, his spine uncomfortably rigid as he kept his eyes trained on Bruce's every move.

Bruce drew in a long breath, turning to lean against the edge of the table. He braced himself with his palms on the tabletop behind him and wet his lips, contemplating how to begin explaining what was on his mind, and hoping that he wasn't mistaken.

"Well, you know, situations like this always come with a price, right?" he began, shrugging one shoulder. "They do, and we both know that, and I knew that before I injected those ten milliliters of my blood into your arc reactor, and I also know that you're pissed about me even doing that in the first place. You're going to be even more pissed at what I'm about to tell you, but I need you to really... not be pissed." A humorless smirk slid onto his lips, and he hoped that the effort would lighten the ambiance at least a tad. Tony only raised his eyebrows in response, urging Bruce to continue.

"It's not that I don't want you to be angry because of _personal_ things or _relationship_ things," Bruce continued, scolding himself for idly dancing around the subject. "It's that you being angry is involuntarily translating into _me_ being angry, and... well, we don't like me when I'm angry."

Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Bruce lifted his gaze to meet Tony. The genius had barely moved during the course of Bruce's explanation, and now he sat eerily still, his only movements the long, slow blink of his eyes.

"So, basically you're telling me that the blood you put inside of me is picking up on whatever hormones are active in my system and transferring their effects to you, and some sort of reaction similar to the one in my body ensues in yours." Tony's voice was flat, and Bruce's only reply was a mere, indifferent nod. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Yes," Bruce sighed softly. "Basically."

His lips pressed into a thin line, Tony tossed the bed sheets away from his legs and pulled himself out of the bed. Before Bruce could protest, the engineer had pulled himself into an upright standing position and was pacing across the room, eventually stopping beside the windowsill. "So I guess that means the gamma isn't gonna kill me, huh?"

Bruce's brow knitted. "Why do you say it like that?" he inquired, the volume of his voice dropping a notch. His gaze was earnest, poring into Tony's back and silently urging him to turn around.

"Say it like what?" Tony threw a glance over his shoulder, catching sight of the expression worn on Bruce's face. "Oh, I didn't mean it like _that._ I meant that... well, this is that sacrifice thing you were going on about, isn't it? It's not like you had to sacrifice anybody's life like you all probably expected. Nah, that's too cliche for someone like Loki. You basically had to sacrifice your self-control, or whatever amount you have of it, over to me. And that sucks just about as much as just ending this whole thing does." He paused to exhale a long sigh, turning to lean his back against the wall. When he shot another glance in Bruce's direction, the glint in his eyes was somewhere between hopeless and guilty. "But I think the kicker here is that you actually have more self-control than I do."

Bruce lifted a hand to run his fingers through his tousled hair. He shouldn't have been surprised. And, actually, when he really thought about it, he wasn't necessarily _surprised,_ per se, but more so disappointed with himself for not noticing earlier. Like anyone would have been, he was caught up in the scheme of life or death, and his lack of caution and logic had ended up costing them both more than they could afford.

 _Of course,_ tauted his inner voice, _your name is Bruce Banner. You live to fuck things up._

Before, though, he'd at least had some idea of how to fix things.

"I'm sorry." It was all Bruce could think of to say at the moment.

"Nah." Tony's lips pulled into a tight smile as he sauntered a few steps towards where Bruce was standing. "Don't be. I've dealt with loads of crap before and I'm still here. So are you. And hell, it's not like we're idiots. We'll figure it out eventually." At last, he stopped beside Bruce at the table, leaning his own hip against it as well.

Bruce unconsciously leaned slightly to the left, bringing his shoulder closer to Tony's chest. He let himself linger in the closeness for a moment, grateful for the small waves of warmth that radiated from his partner's body. "Well, I hope you're right."

Tony gave his signature cocky grin. "Aren't I always?"

The dark-haired scientist couldn't help but smile in return, awash with what felt like a foreign sense of relief. "I'll let you keep thinking that."

**# #**

"My apologies for failing to arrive sooner." Much unlike his attempts to arrive on the planet itself in the first place, it hadn't taken Thor long to locate the Stark Tower and hustle through the one of the doorways, his familiar, thundering voice booming throughout the airy lobby. "The Bifrost gate is still much in need of repair. It will be a long while before I am able to travel freely and easily between my realm and yours."

"Well, we've managed just fine so far." Clint stifled a yawn, hopping down from his perch on a slab of counter that jutted out from the wall. "But it'd be nice if you could take your little brother back to your world and throw him in time-out or something."

"I would be much obliged," Thor replied, sighing internally. He was growing tired of Loki's mischief, and had been for a while - this time, however, was different. From what he'd been told of the situation, the demi-god wasn't quite sure that he'd be able to forgive his brother for the multitude of chaos he'd recently caused within his Midgardian companions; not that he'd completely forgiven Loki for his former betrayals, but this one, Thor thought, would make trying to do so much, much more difficult. "Where is my brother being held?"

"In his cage." Clint didn't bother to specify which - Thor already knew all too well. "I'm thinking that we should just rent that out to him for a monthly fee since he seems to spend so much time down here." With a roll of his eyes, the archer gestured for Thor to follow him down the hall.

When they arrived, Loki was standing eerily still, his back turned to the door. His hands were clasped tightly behind him and he wore a small, devious smirk on his lips, letting it linger as he turned around.

However, the smile quickly dissipated when he caught sight of who had accompanied Clint. "Oh," the god drawled, "it's _you._ "

"Had you not caused turmoil within my Midgardian friends again, my presence would not be necessary," Thor replied, setting Mjolnir aside. "But as the circumstances are not so, I have come to escort you back to your rightful place in Asgard. We are all growing tired of your antics, Loki." He gave his brother a disapproving glance.

"Fine. You have my word." Loki raised a hand, palm facing forward, in surrender. "I have done what I've needed to in this realm. Everything will carry itself out from now on without my aid." Again, the familiar serpentine smile spread across his lips, his toothy grin glinting in the soft light.

Hesitantly, Clint pressed a button that would allow the maximum security doors on the enclosure to slide open, all the while being sure that the raven-haired god would have no chance to escape. Thor took his brother by the arm and he and Clint made quick work of cuffing Loki in chains, and strangely, the god of mischief let them do so without so much as a single protest.

When they had finished, Clint took a moment to examine Loki's expression, wary of the calm demeanor. The archer narrowed his eyes, wetting his lips. "Why do you give up so easily?"

Loki turned his head, giving Clint a knowing glance in return. "I told you," he responded with a shrug, his voice coolly smooth, and almost suave in nature. "What I've left undone will carry itself out eventually."

Clint opened his mouth to reply, but decided against it. Instead, he left his neutral expression in place and led the two Asgardians out of the room, his mind racing.

**# #**

Bruce shouldn't have been surprised when Tony made the sudden decision to ditch the makeshift hospital area for his own bedroom. But considering the types of things the scientist had witnessed within the past couple of days and the consequences that resulted, anything that even seemed close to normal came as more of a surprise than the oddities that he had expected.

He also shouldn't have been surprised when Tony insisted on bringing Bruce along with him, but needless to say, he was.

"You really should be resting," Bruce insisted, though secretly, he didn't object to the short journey. "You need to recuperate."

"And I will," Tony replied coolly, pushing through the door to his room that had been left slightly ajar from weeks ago. "I'll just do it in the comfort of my own room. That other one was making me twitchy. Quite honestly, though, I feel _fine,_ Bruce." He turned, raising his eyebrows as he shrugged.

"Of course you do." Bruce's reply was nonchalant and rather matter-of-fact. "The transfusion supplied you with a rather large amount of energy, but it'll only last for so long."

"I guess we should make use of that time then, hm?" Tony sauntered forward, wearing a lazy smile on his lips.

Bruce hesitated, standing his ground. He opened his mouth to reply, his lips caught between a knowing smirk and a disapproving grimace. "I know that look," he said slowly, letting the smirk slip slightly ahead in the battle. "Now really isn't the time, Tony, we have other priorities -"

"The hell with priorities." The action itself wasn't a shock, but Bruce couldn't help but let his stomach twist into a knot as the much-missed sensation of Tony's arms snaked around his waist. "I don't want to think about those, anyway." Slowly, the engineer leaned forward until his breath tickled the shell of Bruce's ear, lips trailing ever so slightly across the skin.

Bruce held his breath in fear of an unwelcome noise slipping from his mouth. "Tony, really," he breathed finally, struggling to keep himself from giving in. "We - we shouldn't."

"Please, Banner," Tony murmured, "I haven't had you like this in months. Don't act like you don't want it, too." Before Bruce had the chance to reply, Tony had captured his mouth in a kiss, moving their lips together in a rhythm that started out in a slow, almost lazy pattern, but quickly deepened into one with more force and more passion, as if he had to put everything into making up for the time they had lost.

And then Bruce found himself unable to protest any longer, his fingers finding their way through the thick locks of the brunette's hair as his lips parted, letting his tongue begin to dance with the other in a sultry battle for dominance. Tony had taken the opportunity to slide them both onto the nearby bed, Bruce's back falling into the pillows while Tony straddled his waist, letting his hands roam over the doctor's torso without breaking the kiss. With nimble fingers, he made quick work of undoing the buttons on Bruce's shirt and pushing it away before slipping his own over his head and tossing it aside.

Once Tony had discarded his shirt, Bruce took a brief second to let his eyes lock on the arc reactor and its odd colour, feeling almost guilty for tampering with the device that his partner had put everything he had into constructing, his pride and joy, his _lifeline._ He began to breathe a soft sigh, but then Tony's lips were on his neck, sucking and biting at the soft skin there before trailing down towards his collarbone, and what had started as a sigh in Bruce's throat turned into a quiet moan. Tony smiled gently against Bruce's skin upon hearing the noise. _Perfect,_ he thought, _I've missed this._ In a way of shamelessly asking for more, he rolled their hips together suggestively, getting just what he wanted in return.

It wasn't long before Tony could feel his heart begin to speed up just the slightest. God, it had been much too long since he'd had anything even close to this, and the noises Bruce was making coupled with the hard bulge he could feel growing beneath the doctor's pants were sending all of the blood down to his groin. Bruce's hands were on his sides, fingers kneading the skin just above his waist, and in a spur-of-the-moment decision, Tony decided to let one of his own hands slide south and toy with the button on his partner's pants, his palm resting teasingly on top of the man's obvious hardness. When Bruce's hips bucked forward impatiently, Tony finally undid the button and tugged the pants down, wetting his lips with a smirk.

One of the long-term results of Bruce's days on the run that Tony, quite unabashedly, enjoyed was that the scientist had picked up the habit of rarely wearing any undergarments.

Humming softly, Tony met Bruce's gaze as he lowered his head, beginning to press a trail of kisses down the man's chest and stomach. He could feel Bruce shuddering with pleasure beneath his touch, and the long, low moan of pleasure that rumbled deep in his throat came as sweet music to Tony's ears, as if it were the counter-melody that unintentionally roused a sudden spike in the tempo of the organ that thrummed ruggedly against his chest.

Finally, Tony reached his destination, letting his warm breath wash over the base of his lover's length, nuzzling his nose between the man's thighs and taking a moment to glance upwards at Bruce's face, his eyes squeezed shut and his lips slightly parted, taking in air as brief, jagged gasps. Seeing Bruce like this, exposed and panting and surrendering under Tony's touch, was beautiful, so excruciatingly and exceptionally beautiful, that it nearly made him feel as if the past several weeks hadn't even happened and that they'd always been like this, and that the stakes surrounding them hadn't had the chance to exist.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Tony leaned his head forward and took the tip of Bruce's length between his lips, listening intently to the breathy groan that escaped from Bruce's slightly open mouth. Tony grinned internally, taking more of the hardness into his mouth when he felt fingers weave through his hair, gripping on tight. He settled into a rhythm, hollowing his cheeks as his head bobbed back and forth and his tongue swirled across the heated flesh, earning a series of moans and whines and whispered profanities from his partner's lips, but it was only moments until his words became audible.

"Christ, Tony, hold on a sec - we need to sto - oh, _fuck._ " The words caught in Bruce's throat for a moment, and they sounded almost pained. "Tony, stop."

Puzzled, the billionaire quietly slid away, studying Bruce's face. "What, giving up so easily? Has it really been _that_ long, Banner?"

"No, no, no." Bruce paused for a moment, catching his breath and attempting to calm it. "That's not - that's not it. I mean, your heart, my heart... it's not... this really, really isn't safe." When he finally peeled open his eyelids, the remorse behind the irises was almost unbearable.

Tony ran his tongue along his lips, pulling himself up. "You said that you can have sex without a problem, Bruce. You _have_ done it without a problem," he pointed out.

"Because I learned how to control it." Bruce gave him an apologetic stare. "You haven't."

"Yet." Sighing, Tony pulled himself towards the head of the bed, leaning back against the pillows beside Bruce. "You've got to be kidding me," he added lowly, speaking more to himself than the other.

Bruce shifted onto his side, gently draping an arm over Tony's bare chest, the tip of his finger absently tracing the rigid outline of the arc reactor. "It's not forever." He tried his hardest to make his words sound reassuring. "We'll figure it out, right?"

"Hopefully." Tony turned his head to meet Bruce's gaze, stifling a quiet sigh.

"Eventually." A gentle smile appeared on Bruce's expression, one that oddly wasn't forced. He leaned in forward and captured Tony's lips in a tender, reassuring kiss, lasting only a moment. "We'll figure it out eventually."


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contrary to what one may think, no, I haven't forgotten about this story. But life decided to waltz in and repeatedly smack me in the face these past few months, so I haven't been able to give this fic any love recently, which is unfortunate. But, good news! It's nearly summer vacation out here, so I'll have a lot more time and energy to devote to writing (and hopefully finishing) this.
> 
> Until that point, well, here's a new chapter to tide you over. I mean, if any of you are still out there reading this thing. If you are, thank you muchly and I hope you enjoy!

It was only a matter of hours between when the sun fell behind the horizon and rose again at dawn, but Bruce could have sworn the time felt nearer to millennia.

The feelings of warmth and tenderness that emanated from his partner's arms and into his body were things much missed for far too long, and he savored every last drop of it, finding himself almost worried that it was only a matter of time until everything would fall apart again and they'd be back where they were only mere months ago. _But not now,_ Bruce thought, exhaling a soft sigh from his nose. _Not now. You're here._ He's _here. Things are alright._

Gently, as if not to disturb the still-sleeping Tony, Bruce twisted in the bed so he was face to face with his partner. He let his eyes roam over the peaceful features of Tony's face, relieved that the genius was finally at rest, _regular_ rest, and not something induced by some sort of peril or tragedy for a change. He knew that this wasn't over, and probably wouldn't be over for a long time, but right then at that moment, it seemed too good to be true. It was surreal, almost, to let everything that had happened in the past few months fade away and just lie there, content.

Bruce drew in a breath of the fresh morning air and shifted to rest his head on Tony's chest. He tried to push away the errant thoughts of what was pumping through the heart he heard beating below his ear, and instead tried to focus on its soothing, rhythmic thrumming that coaxed him further into relaxation. _We'll figure it out eventually._ He cracked a small smile at the rare optimism running through his mind. _Eventually, it'll be normal… or as normal as we can make it._

Just as he was beginning to let his eyes close again, Bruce was jolted to awareness by a series of short raps on the bedroom door. "Damn," he muttered, making quick and flustered work of pulling himself up and finding the remainder of his clothing. "Tony, get up. Someone's at the door."

Tony shifted just the slightest and muttered something that sounded like, "Who cares?" into the pillow. Bruce sighed and shook his head, fastening the last few buttons on his shirt.

"Seriously, Stark, just get up." The doctor carefully slid his legs off the bed and stood up, sauntering in the direction of the door.

"It's not like they don't all know, anyway," Tony mumbled in response, rubbing at his face as he slowly pulled himself into a sitting position. Bruce shot him a glance that was halfway between warning and disapproving before opening the door just a hair.

A rather bright-eyed Clint stood on the opposite side, his shoulder against the wall (how the archer was so alert at that hour of the morning, Bruce didn't know; but it was Clint, and Clint was rarely up for questioning). His gaze was almost studious as it settled on Bruce, flickering to and fro over the doctor's disheveled, exhausted appearance.

"Fury wants to see you. Uh," Clint paused to glance over Bruce's shoulder, catching sight of a now-standing Tony in the background. "Both of you."

"What for?" Tony's inquiry somehow sounded both curious and exasperated, even though he fully well knew the answer.

"What do you think?" Clint threw a glance at the arc reactor, mockingly squinting his eyes at the unusually and really rather uncomfortably bright light emanating from its presence. A moment later, his face twisted into a joking smile and he softly punched Tony in the shoulder. "I suggest you get down there before Fury busts a nerve. Room 22B." The archer quirked an eyebrow at the two before he turned on his heel and sauntered back down the hallway.

Bruce stood at the doorway a few moments more, his gaze set straight ahead, until he stifled a sigh and turned back around. _Before Fury busts a nerve._ Well, that certainly didn't sound too enticing.

"We should probably get going, then," the scientist murmured, avoiding his companion's steady gaze he could feel poring into the side of his face. He began unbuttoning his tousled, unkempt shirt to search for a fresh one, and as soon as he slid it from his shoulders, he felt warm, calloused skin take its place.

"I know he's gonna try and peg it on you." Tony's voice was as smooth as honey in contrast to the rough skin of his hands ghosting over Bruce's bare shoulders. His warm breath spilled his words over Bruce's ear and down his neck, soothing the doctor's nerves just as Tony knew they would. "Don't let him. I have as much to do with this as you do."

"I guess you could put it that way," Bruce replied with somewhat of a shrug. He turned his head and placed a light kiss on the corner of Tony's mouth before stepping forward to retrieve another shirt, shuddering slightly when he felt Tony's fingers trail down the curvature of his spine. He quickly pulled on a new shirt and attempted to smooth his hair. "Come on, get dressed. We've got to go."

"I'm already dressed." Tony gestured nonchalantly towards his rumpled tee shirt and sweatpants, wearing a smug smirk on his face.

Bruce internally rolled his eyes. "Really?"

"To be fair, I _was_ dying, like, yesterday."

"Okay. Okay, fine. We really should go, though. You know how Fury gets when he's impatient."

Tony grunted a few words, something that sounded like "some namesake," before he reluctantly strolled out of the bedroom behind Bruce. Their trip down to the conference room was mostly spent in silence, both of them racking their brains for some sort of strategy to handle Fury. And of course they both knew that they could very well be overreacting, but nobody, not even Tony, knew exactly what to expect from Nick Fury.

When they finally arrived at their destination, Bruce hesitated outside the door. He shouldn't have been worried, not over something like this that could potentially turn out to be something actually quite trivial, but he was. Chewing on his lip, he looked over at Tony, who gave him a knowing glance almost as if he were saying, " _I got your back."_

Bruce gave him a brief smile in return before he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Light filtered in through the expansive wall of glass, casting down across the oblong table and over the floor. The exposure of this particular room always made Bruce just the slightest bit uneasy, even though he knew he had nothing to worry about here in New York, in Stark Tower – and this situation wasn't really helping.

"Director Fury." Bruce nodded at the director, who was seated at the far left of the table. His stance was oddly casual, his torso slouched back in the chair while his chin rested on his fist. As soon as he heard the doctor's voice, he turned and placed his studious, one-eyed gaze on the two.

"Doctor Banner… Mr. Stark." Fury nodded coolly at each of them, his steady calm almost eerie. "Have a seat, both of you." Quietly, and rather reluctantly, they both complied. As soon as everyone was settled, Fury pulled himself forward and rested his elbows on the table, flashing a small, sly smile at the two across from him.

"Instead of wasting everyone's time by recapping the questionable events of the past several weeks and beating around the bush, I'll just cut to the chase," the director began, giving the pair a pointed glance. His eye briefly dropped to the glowing device in the middle of Tony's chest. "How long is this going to last?"

"Is what going to last, sir?" Honestly, Fury's question could have meant a variety of things, so Bruce figured that playing dumb for a few minutes couldn't hurt.

"This." Fury waved his hand in a small circle, gesturing to the empty space between himself and the other two. "This… _situation._ Mr. Stark's arc reactor, the gamma, _you two._ " He paused, giving them both a pointed glance before shifting to lean back in his chair. "Both of you came into this team knowing that you must provide in the best interest of SHIELD. Keeping situations like this one all hush-hush isn't what we do. We don't _do_ secrets."

Tony scoffed. "Really? 'Cause the last time I checked, you guys were knee-deep in –"

"That is not what we're discussing here, Mr. Stark." Fury's voice boomed and ricocheted across the room, silencing even Tony's silver tongue. "What we're discussing is that whatever is going on here, whatever is going on between the two of you, is not in the best interest of the team. And I want, nay, _need_ to know two things: what exactly the situation _is,_ and how long it is going to last."

"It'll last as long as we need to figure it out," Tony replied coolly. He folded his arms casually over his chest and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. "Plain and simple."

"So what's your estimation on that?" Fury pried. "Do you even know? Do you even know what you've gotten yourselves into, or are you just acting like it?"

"No, we know," Tony responded. "I'm just a bit baffled as to what gives you the authority to waltz into _my_ tower, you know, the one that _I_ built, and inquire about the details of my personal life."

Fury couldn't help but crack a sarcastic smile. "Personal life?"

"Well, you know," Tony paused to shrug, "stuff about what's keeping me alive and _still_ able to kick your ass, what's powering it, who I'm sleeping with; seems a bit… personal, don't you think?" He felt a wary glance from Bruce brush across his face, so in response he discreetly slid an arm beneath the table and squeezed the doctor's hand.

"Anything that has potential to be a danger to the team, I need to know about." Fury pressed his palms to the table to hoist himself up. "Each of those things have that potential. You both signed off your personal lives when you made the decision to join this team, so I suggest you stay true to that contract, lest you want to break it."

Tony felt his skin begin to burn, his fists clenching. Dammit, this was not at all going the way he wanted it to – of course, nothing ever really went the way he wanted it to unless he was the one in charge of it, but clearly, Fury wasn't about to let that happen.

"If you're going to kick me off the team because of something that I couldn't even begin to control, fine. I was never qualified enough in the first place, right?" Tony spat, bringing himself up to stand opposite the SHIELD director. His arms were folded firmly across his chest, and he could almost feel the anger burning behind his eyes, equally as if not brighter than what blazed inside of the artificial lifeline in the center of his breast.

Fury, however, remained eerily still and calm. "You couldn't control it when it happened, but you can control it now. If Dr. Banner had taken the time –"

"Do _not_ bring him into this." Tony's tone was venomous. "Do not try and turn this on him."

"He has just as much to do with this as you do, Mr. Stark. He could have taken the time to formulate a better solution, but instead he took the easy way out and proposed an issue that threatens everybody involved." Now, only moments later, it was noticeable that Fury's shell was beginning to crack. "Both of you are above that."

"He didn't have any other goddamn _choice!"_

"Stop it, both of you, just shut _up."_ Considering how quiet he'd remained throughout most of the exchange, both Tony and Fury found themselves startled by Bruce's sudden outburst. He too pulled himself to a standing position, taking a few wandering steps to the side as he ran a hand through his tousled curls. "It is my fault. Or at least most of it is. And I'll fix it, okay? Just give me some time. And I'll _fix it."_

Tony blinked, taken aback. He started towards the doctor, his brows furrowed. "Bruce, come on –"

"Good, then." Before Tony could say any more, Fury's thunderous tone silenced him. "Do that. Fix it, then come back and show me. Until then, you're both done with SHIELD." With that, he shot them both a pointed glance as if to add _'no questions asked'_ before he turned on his heel and exited the room, letting the door click shut behind him.

Tony simply turned and stared at the door, shaking his head. "Asshole," he muttered. "Knew it from the second I met him."

Bruce, meanwhile, was still facing one of the expansive windows and focusing on taking calming breaths to soothe his shaky temper. He slowly, steadily let out his breath on the last one, pressing a palm against the glass. "He's right, though. It's dangerous. Of course, so was bringing me onto the team, but I guess all of this just doubles it." He paused, rubbing his forehead. "They don't know about that part of it, though. But Fury sounded like he did."

"He probably bugged the room or something," Tony huffed exasperatedly. "He probably bugged a lot of rooms, actually. 'Cause he's an invasive ass."

"He had every right to."

"Are you seriously siding with him?"

"No," Bruce replied firmly. "I'm not. But it became his jurisdiction as soon as we figured out it was Loki. He had the right to listen in on what was going on. I'm not saying I like it, but it's true."

"You are so siding with him." Tony shook his head and dropped his hands to his sides. "I can't believe it."

"Look, I wanted to be kicked off that team as much as you did, Stark." Bruce turned around and eyed the other man, his body tense. " _I didn't._ So we can stand here and be pissed about it, or you can quit being a stubborn little shit and let me fix this. What are you going to do?"

For a few moments, Tony just stood and stared at Bruce. He stared at the way Bruce's shoulders slouched, the way his hands shook and his eyes drooped, and how it all just made him look so exhausted, so desperate for this all to be over. Normalcy, Tony thought, he wanted normalcy, or at least whatever it was they had before.

Being the usual ' _stubborn little shit'_ Tony Stark wasn't going to help that.

Tony pressed his lips into a thin line, turning on his heel towards the door. Almost silently, he approached the door and pulled it open, stepping out into the empty hallway.

Bruce lifted his gaze from where it had dropped to the floor, wetting his lips. "Where are you going?"

Halfway out the door, Tony stopped mid-stride and tossed a glance over his shoulder, accompanied by a shrug. "You don't plan on fixing it alone, do you?"


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that time two months ago when I was really excited to have time to write and then didn't write at all cause I hit a horrible wall of writer's block because I totally don't what are you talking about.
> 
> Yeah, no, really, all kidding aside, I'm sorry for the super long delay. But as an offering of thanks to all of you for putting up with my ridiculous updating "schedule," this chapter is a bit longer than usual, and I hope you all enjoy it.

"I still can't believe Fury seriously kicked you off the team." Clint was comfortably kicked back in one of the many chairs in the tower's lounge area, having been fiddling absently with the tech on one of his arrows until Bruce strolled in, the endless hours of tiresome lab work clearly drawn into the lines on his face. "I mean, I was expecting him to bitch at you guys yesterday and everything, but… man, benching _both_ of you? That's just below the belt."

Bruce sank into the sofa, some of the tension fleeing his muscles to leave room for a new kind of dull, tired soreness to inch its way into his bones. "Yeah, we weren't expecting it either," he replied, running a hand over his face, "obviously." In hindsight, he should have seen it coming, seen the inevitable consequences from taking such a risk that in turn put everyone else's well-being in danger. But he'd been blinded by the heat of the moment, caught up in making the choice that could make or break a life, and of course he hadn't thought of what the proceeding days were going to bring.

"It's just dumb, you know?" Clint continued, finishing some long-winded statement about Fury's questionable 'logic' that Bruce quite honestly hadn't heard. "Putting you guys on the sidelines isn't going to accomplish anything. What's it going to do besides screw over a bunch of future missions, really? Make you work faster, try and _compromise?"_ The archer sighed caustically, rolling his eyes.

"Yes, actually." Bruce's tone was rather matter-of-fact, as was the light shrug of his shoulders that accompanied them. "He probably thinks it's going to give us motivation to figure it out faster – which is true – so if you think about it, it _is_ a valid reason. Among… others."

"What others?" Steve piped up from the other side of the room, having been preoccupied with a sketch pad in his lap. He'd managed to stay rather quiet and out of sight for the past few days, relieved to finally have some room to breathe, even if only for a little while. "Like the gamma-infested arc reactor thing?"

"Or like the 'Stark and Banner are sleeping together' thing," Clint added, his tone nonchalant as if the whole deal was old news – which it kind of was, or at least it was to Bruce, who could have been sure that his love life was the least of anyone's worries.

"Wait, what?" Steve, clearly, didn't share Bruce's line of thought. "You can't be serious. You and Stark? No way." A curious smile made its way to his lips, and for a few moments it seemed as if the typical chatter of the tower had returned to normal.

Clint scoffed, sending a disbelieving glance in Steve's direction. "You didn't know? Please, Cap, it's clear as day. You can't tell me you seriously think all that time holed away in the lab is spent _working._ Right, Banner?"

 _Great, here we go._ Bruce stifled a sigh, pushing his fingers through his tousled curls and wishing the two would just get their fix and drop the subject. "Fine, yeah, you got me. No use in hiding it anymore, I suppose. But it's really not any reason for Fury to –"

"Is the sex as good as the tabloids say?" Clint twisted in his seat and gave the physicist a cocky grin, wagging an eyebrow.

Bruce let himself finally heave a sigh, throwing a heated glance in the archer's direction before rolling his eyes. "Yes, Clint, it's _phenomenal,"_ he replied, his tone dripping with what could have been perceived as biting sarcasm, though quite honestly was anything but. He almost opened his mouth to change the subject, but didn't get very far before the other two continued.

"I always thought all that scientific jargon was a little curious," Steve said, the smile on his face widening to something that was refreshingly carefree and genuine. "Some of it just _sounds_ ridiculous. What was it that one time, thermo-something astrophysics?"

"More like _ass_ -trophysics," Clint quipped, unable to stop himself from chuckling lightly at his own joke.

Bruce sat in confused silence for a moment, not quite sure how to respond to whatever the hell had just come out of Clint's mouth. " _Ass_ -tro…?" he repeated skeptically, before shaking his head and deciding to just give it up. "Yeah, uh, Tony and I are a thing, now you know. But all kidding aside, it's definitely not the only reason Fury did what he did."

The smile Steve had worn for the past few minutes slowly slid away, replaced by a somewhat concerned expression that unfortunately seemed familiar. "It might not be the only reason, but it could be one of them," he pointed out with a shrug.

"Why?" Clint asked indifferently, "so they're screwing. Nothing to do with the team."

"It's not just _screwing,"_ Bruce mumbled, unsure if he actually meant for the others to hear it. His relationship with Tony extended far beyond just the physical, and it almost sent a pang of pity through him that the others couldn't or just _didn't_ recognize that for whatever reason – but he knew and Tony knew that what they had between them was theirs, and Bruce decided to leave it at that.

Steve shot Bruce a glance of acknowledgment, sending the same expression in Clint's direction. "Well, you know how certain employers have a rule that coworkers can't date each other because it might cause a conflict of interest? It might be like that. I hate to say it, but it makes sense."

"It does make sense, and we know that," Bruce responded, not too fond of the direction conversation seemed to be taking. "That may be part of the reason we waited so long to come out about it. But I still don't think it's that important; Fury doesn't strike me as the type of guy to really care about other people's… love lives." He shrugged, making the gesture as casual as he could manage.

"What is it, then?" Clint glanced expectantly between the two. "The gamma thing? I don't know what you guys have figured out in the lab, but Stark is back to being an asshole and hasn't slept in like two days, so he seems pretty normal to me."

"That's the problem. We haven't actually found anything in the lab." Bruce paused, scratching the light stubble on his chin and making a scatter-brained mental note to shave at some point. In the back of his mind, he knew he should probably tell the others about the glaring consequence of the 'gamma thing' (as Clint had so eloquently put it), but he and Tony had a sort of unspoken agreement on keeping their lips sealed about the issue. It was for a valid reason, Bruce had to admit, because if anybody, he was without a doubt the most adamant about not jumping to conclusions before every little detail had been analyzed and put into place – but there was something about keeping _this_ particular secret, about staying silent on yet another account of their connectedness, that sent an almost bittersweet chill through Bruce's veins. "Or at least not anything conclusive," he added, still tossing around the idea of whether or not to say anything.

"Nothing at all?" Steve asked, concern drawn across his features. "You two have been working for all that time and there's nothing?"

"Well," Bruce started, managing the push the battle out of his mind and decide to just break the silence. "There's _something,_ but… it's not pleasant. And I honestly don't know if there's a way to fix it other than making Tony learn how to control himself, but I think we all know that's probably a lost cause." He smirked humorlessly, hoping the gesture would slice through the heaviness of the subject but wasn't surprised when it fell flat.

"Christ, don't tell me Stark is gonna start turning into a giant rage monster too," Clint sighed, his head falling back against the cushion of the chair. "He's bad enough when he's drunk."

Bruce looked over at him, the small smile that once lacked any feeling gaining a slight hint of genuine amusement. "No, that's still just me," he said, "but that rage monster might start showing up more often if Tony doesn't learn how to calm down."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"If you think I'm saying that the blood transfusion put Tony in control of the emotions that trigger the Other Guy, then yes," Bruce replied, momentarily surprised at the nonchalance of his tone in spite of the subject. He didn't give himself the time to gage the reactions of his former-teammates before he stood up and turned towards the general direction of the kitchen. "So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make myself some heavily caffeinated tea and try and talk some sense into him before he does something stupid."

Steve leaned forward in his seat, a dumbfounded expression crossing his face. "Wait, that's all you're going to say about it?" He seemed almost skeptical, unable to mask his obvious concern as Bruce threw a glance over his shoulder.

"That's really all we know about it," Bruce replied, mentally kicking himself for mentioning it. Tony wasn't going be happy, he was sure, especially since the engineer was already more than a little peeved at how the remaining team members tentatively tip-toed around him.

"Dr. Banner," Steve continued, vying to keep the doctor's attention. "That seems… really dangerous."

"Yeah," Bruce breathed, turning back around in an uncomfortable shuffle. "It is. We're trying to figure it out. Don't worry about it too much." He decided to leave it at that, ignoring the hushed murmurs between the other two as he turned his back and exited the room, and knowing that he was already worried enough to count for the both of them.

**# #**

Tony quite honestly had lost track of how many hours he'd spent in the lab and how many cups of coffee it had taken to even keep him awake after a while. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, really, except that he was rarely ever _this_ stressed while working and it was usually much longer before his vision began to blur and the data became _this_ unclear, but he instead tried to blame it on inconclusive test results rather than his own insecurities that maybe this whole thing couldn't be fixed.

And if that was true, if he couldn't fix it or just brush it under the rug like everything else that ever went wrong, well, Tony wasn't sure how or if he'd be able to deal with that. This whole situation was slowly chipping away at his conscience, destroying him, destroying the team, destroying _Bruce,_ and Tony was inching dangerously close to the edge of how much he could handle without breaking. He couldn't watch Bruce continue to blame himself every second for what had happened, couldn't watch the way his eyes darkened when he caught sight of the reactor or refused any kind of intimate contact that might, just _might,_ set him off. It was getting to be too much, and Tony dreaded that the cracks were beginning to show.

"Hey." Tony was startled out of his daze by Bruce's voice, not having heard him approach. "You're still down here?"

"Obviously," Tony mumbled, his eyes glued to the computer screen before him and the senseless graphs and numbers that were beginning to seem hopeless. "And before you ask, no, I still haven't got anything. It's all the same as before and none of the damn numbers are adding up, the tests aren't showing anything new, and I can't find anything anywhere else." He huffed exasperatedly, almost oblivious to the warmth of Bruce's hands sliding over his shoulders.

"Tony," Bruce sighed, his hands roaming over his partner's shoulders and attempting to work out a few knots he found along the way. "You haven't slept in 36 hours. You should really give this a break for a while, you're not going to figure anything out when you're exhausted." Tony wasn't looking at him, but Bruce could picture the way his mouth twisted into a wearied grimace and how the dark circles beneath his eyes accentuated the dull paleness of his skin. Dragging Tony away from his hours of works was a routine Bruce had come to know and even love at times, maybe when the circumstances weren't so grim.

"I'm not going to figure anything out by sleeping, either," Tony countered, his fingers absently punching a few more numbers into the formula on the screen.

"Yes, because your sleep-deprived brain is doing such commendable work." Bruce fought the urge to roll his eyes, turning Tony's chair away from the table so they were facing each other. "Just come upstairs for a while. Take a break, it'll do you some good to get away from all this."

"Get away from it," Tony scoffed, meeting Bruce's eyes for a split second before looking away. "There's not just _getting away_ from it. It's _in_ me, I'm living with it. I can't just walk away from it for a few hours, and quite frankly, I really want to get the damn thing fixed before anyone else finds out and makes a charity case out of it."

Bruce hesitated for a moment, catching the words at the tip of his tongue that almost slipped to make a comment about how _he_ had to live with it too, how he'd _been_ living with the constant pressure of explicit self-control nagging at his brain for however long, and how he'd done nothing less than force himself to 'walk away' from it time to time as best he could. But he wasn't Tony and Tony hadn't lived the same way he had, running and hiding and forcing himself to keep every little thought in check, so Bruce thought it best to hold his tongue on the subject.

"They already know," he said finally, making the risky decision to keep a hand on Tony's shoulder. "Clint and Cap do, at least. And before you start, I told them because they deserve to know what's going on."

"Dammit, Banner." Tony sighed exasperatedly, running a hand over his face. "I thought we agreed not to tell anyone about this. Now all they're gonna do is worry the shit out of it."

"Keeping it a secret isn't going to solve it any faster," Bruce replied, removing his hand and letting it fall to his side. "It's just going to put more stress on the two of us, which is going to make us work slower and probably not figure it out any sooner. Maybe the others can help if they know about it. Just leave it be."

"How the hell could they help?" Tony retorted, sending a heated glance in Bruce's direction. "They don't know how any of this works."

"And we do?" Bruce huffed, shooting Tony a disapprovingly expectant glance. "You seriously think we know what we're doing here? We've been working for _days_ and haven't figured out a damn thing, Tony. And maybe there's nothing left to figure out, because we already know what's happening to you and we already know that I could have went about it differently and saved us all this trouble, but I didn't. Because you were dying and I panicked. Because I _love_ you and couldn't lose you to that." He snapped his mouth shut after the last sentence when he realized what he'd said and noticed the way Tony's eyes widened out of what could have been shock, or relief, or… Bruce didn't want to think of the other options. Instead he kept silent for a moment, taking a few seconds to compose himself before starting again, softer and slower. "Look, I just thought that they, our _friends,_ might be able to help out somehow. If you don't agree, fine, but they deserve to know anyway. I'll be in the bedroom if you need me."

Tony watched him leave, trying to open his mouth to call him back, but finding that he couldn't form the words. He shouldn't have been surprised, he _wasn't_ surprised, actually, it wasn't like they hadn't ever alluded to the idea that what they had between them was _love,_ but actually hearing the words had struck him speechless. In fact, he could have sworn Bruce had uttered those words at some point before, sometime recent, but Tony was still struggling to remember most of what had happened while he'd been under Loki's influence.

And it wasn't that Tony didn't feel the same, because he did – dammit, he really did, but those were _feelings_ and there were few things in the world that made Tony Stark more uncomfortable than having and voicing feelings. Especially now, when there was still so much tension and uncertainty surrounding the both of them, and he decided that he couldn't and _wouldn't_ deal with this, not here, not now.

Tony did what he could to push the thoughts away and get back to work, but the numbers still hadn't changed and the graphs and formulas continued to mock him from the computer screen. After a while he just gave up, his eyes glued absently to the screen until he heard the door slide open and the familiar click of heels against the tiled floor.

"Is everything alright down here?" Pepper's voice traveled across the open area, the raw concern in her tone managing to draw Tony away from his thoughts. "I just saw Bruce upstairs and he looked a little worried."

"Yeah, everything's fine," Tony replied, trying to sound more confident than he actually felt. "He's probably just stressed. Don't worry about it." He kept his gaze fixed on the screen, hoping Pepper would fall for his act of morale and leave him alone with his thoughts.

"Last I checked, things weren't pretty when Bruce gets stressed." But this was _Pepper,_ Pepper who'd lived and worked with and even dated Tony for years, and of course she wasn't going to fall for that. "And they're not really a walk in the park when you're stressed, either."

"I'm not stressed. Did I say was I stressed? No, so I'm not stressed." Tony stifled a sigh, mindlessly looking over the data once more despite that he knew it hadn't changed.

"Alright, you're not stressed. But you're clearly tired and not thinking straight, which will turn into stress eventually." Pepper walked forward and pulled up a stool, sitting down beside Tony and urging him to look at her. "You really need a break from this, Tony. It's not doing you any good."

Tony let himself fully heave the sigh this time, reluctantly turning to face her. "I know, okay? Banner literally just told me that, I _know._ But I have to figure this out, because I don't know how much longer the reactor is going to sustain itself without the Vibranium or how much longer I'll be able to handle the gamma or if I'm going to be able to at all. I have to figure this out, Pepper. I can't just 'take a break' from it. I can't."

Pepper studied his face as he spoke, a strange kind of doubt crossing her own expression. Normally Tony was nothing short of exceptional at masking his emotions, and it was only years of spending their lives together side by side that allowed Pepper to finally see through it and read him like a book. This, though, this was different. Anybody could see how much this was wearing on Tony, on Bruce, and on whoever else was involved, and Pepper tried not to dwell on the fact that there was next to nothing she could do about it. "Ever thought of taking a break from something else, then?" she asked, her gaze flickering uncomfortably to the cylinder of oddly-colored light in the center of Tony's chest.

"What are you talking about?" Tony's brow furrowed, confused.

"I'm talking about that." Pepper gestured towards the arc reactor. "Ever think of getting that removed, shrapnel and all?"

Tony hesitated for a moment, almost taken aback. "You're telling me to ditch the arc reactor?" he asked, his voice stricken with disbelief. "Are you kidding? I can't do that, it's – it's _part_ of me, and it powers the suits, and… I can't do that. I'm not getting rid of it, no way, not happening." He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest, almost as if it were a protective instinct of sorts.

Pepper tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, giving the engineer an incredulous glance. "You managed to build that thing out of scrap metal locked away in a cave in Afghanistan," she began, "and you're telling me you never thought of a different way to power the suits?"

"I never thought I needed to." Tony shrugged, breaking the eye contact when it began to make him uncomfortable. "Besides, getting rid of it probably wouldn't solve anything."

"It would get rid of the gamma, wouldn't it? Not to mention all those shards of metal trying to inch their way into your heart," Pepper pointed out matter-of-factly.

Tony huffed and chewed on the inside of his cheek, wishing that she wasn't right. "It would get rid of Banner's blood that's acting as a power source," he admitted, his voice barely above an irritated mutter. "But there's still the radiation in general to think about. And the whole point of the reactor in the first place is to stop the shrapnel from going anywhere. You know that."

"It's still dangerous. Anybody could tell you that." Pepper gave him a pointedly disapproving glance before letting her expression soften. "Seriously, Tony, just give it some thought. It might not solve the whole problem, but it might get you a little closer. Maybe you need the change." She pulled herself to her feet, placing a comforting hand on Tony's shoulder. Tony sat still with his eyes glued to the floor, tension radiating from the stiffness of his muscles.

"You're asking me to give up being Iron Man."

Pepper sighed softly through her nose, swallowing thickly. "Maybe I am," she replied, her voice distant to Tony's ears. "If you're not going to do it for yourself, then maybe you should do it for me. Or for the team. For Bruce."

She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze before turning to walk away, the click of her heels fading until the door fell shut with a dull thump behind her, finally leaving Tony alone with nothing but his own excruciating thoughts – but at that point, he really wished she hadn't.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … hi. I’m back from the dead, or maybe a better way to word it is ‘back from the rut of really wanting to write but not having the time, brain energy, or motivation to’ which is a lot like ‘dead’ if we’re being honest here.  
> Anyway, that being said, a new chapter is here nonetheless. I can say with some amount of confidence that we’re also nearing the end with this fic here, which both excites and saddens me, but that’s a story for another time. As always, thank you all so, so much for sticking with me for so long and I really hope you enjoy it.

Contrary to what one may think, Tony _didn't_ always love the spotlight. Sure, he put on his typical A-list celebrity façade; smile for the camera, throw around a few wisecracks, act like an asshole who's in way over his head. It worked, and it was believable to mostly everyone (luckily for him, tabloid reporters weren't exactly the brightest). But he didn't _love_ it. He never had. Maybe when he was younger, when he'd just started his career and the limelight was something of a new shiny toy to play around and tinker with, but it quickly grew old and tiresome just as fast as anything else. Solitude was easily his greatest escape, hiding away in his workshop with DUM-E and Jarvis and Butterfingers – friends that weren't _really_ friends, finding that somehow an artificial mind understood him better than a living one.

He was quick to realize, though, that the comforts of seclusion only last as long as his emotions were isolated as well. They only last until the crushing silence and cyclone of shrieking thoughts become too much to bear and denying closeness becomes less and less of an option.

Then Tony had Pepper, and it all seemed to fall into place again. She balanced him, he challenged her, they _worked_ – until, inevitably, they fell apart. And he was back to where he'd started, that is, until Bruce Banner slipped into his life as calmly and cautiously as the physicist entered anything, really.

And he still had both of them, both in their own unique, respective ways. Or at least he still had them if he decided to take the reins and fix this whole hurricane of a situation, but if he stayed put and did nothing and dwelled, drowning it all in a glass of something highly alcoholic, well… _they_ would end up losing _him._

Tony huffed out an exasperated sigh, pushing his fingers through his tousled mop of hair. As if the entire thing wasn't already difficult enough… well, that's the way it always went, he supposed. Things always got worse before they got better, however at this point the notion of anything 'getting better' seemed just a little too far out of his reach. He took one last sip from the glass in his hand (Bruce had repeatedly told him that alcohol wasn't a fantastic idea given his condition, but…), setting it aside before he pulled himself to his feet.

He took his time on the walk up to the bedroom, racking his brain for something, _anything_ to say to Bruce once he found him, but gave up just as quickly as he'd started. There was really no telling how his partner was going to react anyway, and Tony knew better than to try and predict anything that went through Bruce's head, especially dealing with such a sensitive situation.

Bruce was perched quietly on the bed when Tony reached the slightly ajar doorway, his legs folded neatly beneath him as his eyes stayed trained on the book in his hands. Tony chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment before he entered, deciding to keep quiet and let Bruce do the talking first, if at all. He slid onto the bed a little tentatively, stretching his legs out in front of him with a small sigh.

"Feeling better?" Bruce asked softly once Tony had gotten settled. The lines of his back were riddled with tension, his eyes fixed motionlessly on the pages of his book, which gave Tony the obvious impression that the man had actually done very little 'reading.'

"Only if you are," Tony replied, pushing any lingering sentiment out of his voice in favor of what came off as nonchalance, leaning back against the headboard.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bruce's eyes almost flickered to the man beside him but stopped at the last second, opting instead to stare at the tousled bed sheets.

"Well, 'cause if I remember right, you were the one who got all huffy and ran out of the lab down there." Tony shrugged a shoulder, his fingers making absentminded work with a loose thread on his shirt. "So I'm only fine if you –"

"Tony." Bruce heaved a small sigh, shifting to rest his head in his hand. "Please." Tony complied with a slight nod, turning his head to examine Bruce's skillfully hidden expression. It took him a second to pull away from his own thoughts enough to recognize that this was killing Bruce just as much as it was killing him, and that if anything he'd have to dig up the well-hidden empathy he'd stored away years ago to actually make this work. He tentatively lifted an arm and set his hand on his partner's knee, squeezing lightly.

"Alright," Tony breathed, "yeah, sorry. I'm just a little wound up, I guess." He felt Bruce hesitate before the warmth of the physicist's rough fingers slid over his own.

"Understandable," Bruce replied rather easily despite the obvious tension Tony could still feel radiating from his body. "I suppose we both are, obviously."

"Yeah, well, not without reason." Tony looked up at his partner again, hoping that his steady, almost intrusive gaze would urge the other man to finally put Tony's nerves to rest and look over at him. It didn't.

Bruce shifted a little on the bed, pulling Tony's hand from his knee to absently toy with it between both of his own. "Did you find anything else after I left?" he asked, seemingly distracted but still clearly very much on edge.

"No," Tony answered honestly, "you were right, I don't really know what I'm doing or what I'm looking for or any of that crap. I talked to Pepper, though."

"Why do you say it like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like she said something horrible that knocks your already-inflated ego down a few pegs." Finally, Bruce turned and set his gaze on Tony, a small, nearly humorless smile on his lips despite the bitter exhaustion that dulled the usual glint of affection in his eyes that Tony couldn't help but notice each time their gazes had met in the past. "Which actually wouldn't surprise me. She seems to have a knack for that."

Tony decided to ignore the latter half of Bruce's statement, knowing it was far too accurate to possibly refute with some sort of witty remark. "Kinda," he admitted, letting his hand go limp between Bruce's fingers. "She told me I should get rid of the arc reactor. Eliminate the core of where the radiation is coming from." As Tony had expected, he man beside him simply sat in stunned silence for a moment as he thought.

"It –it would help," Bruce started, "probably," he added, knowing all too well how Tony felt about the idea just from the expression he wore on his face. "I mean, she's right. There'd still be a reasonable amount of radiation left over that we'd have to consider, but it would get rid of the source, not to mention the shrapnel problem…" He leaned forward, elbow resting on his knee as he tangled his fingers into his hair. "It makes sense."

"Yeah, well, you're kinda forgetting the other giant consequence," Tony sighed, dropping his head back against the wall.

"No," Bruce murmured, "I know, Tony." He turned his gaze back towards the man beside him, just the slightest glint of empathy in his otherwise dull eyes. "But you have to look at the big picture here."

"Yeah, I know what the 'big picture' is," Tony huffed, already a bit unintentionally frustrated. "It's either don't get rid of this," he paused to gesture towards the center of his chest, "and make everything harder on both of us, or _do_ get rid of it and give up my suits. One or the other. It's a pretty simple picture, Banner."

"Well, when you look at it _that_ way it is." Bruce almost rolled his eyes. Tony's occasional narrow-mindedness, or whatever kind of façade it was that he put on, never really failed to amaze him. "But the fact that you're even up here talking about it obviously means it's not _that_ simple. If it was you would have made a decision already."

Tony paused to consider for a moment. Okay, maybe Bruce was right (well, he was definitely right, not that Tony would ever admit it). Logically, it was easy. The smart thing to do was his former option: ditch the reactor, eliminate the shrapnel and most of the gamma problem, and hopefully gain Bruce his much-needed self-control back. But, despite his apparent heroism and what other people liked to call sacrifices, Tony was still, without a doubt, a selfish man. "Honestly, Bruce, it doesn't even matter what I do anymore." Sure, that would be his excuse. "No matter what I end up doing, Loki is getting what he wants in the end. He'll have destroyed one of us either way. It doesn't _matter._ "

"So that's what this is about now?" Bruce quirked an eyebrow somewhat skeptically. "It's about Loki? Christ, Tony, if there's anything that doesn't matter, it's _him._ "

"You weren't there, Bruce," Tony retorted, the low monotony of his voice in sharp, almost unsettling contrast to his normal light and witty tone. "Look, I know what he wants, and that's it. I'm not going to let him win. I can't."

"Helping yourself isn't letting him win." Bruce almost sighed, but stifled it at the last moment. "I'm sure you can find another way to keep your suits without the reactor. Rhodes doesn't have a chunk of metal in his chest and his suit seems to work just fine."

"That's different." Tony detached his hand from Bruce's fingers and slumped back against the bed, turning his gaze away as he folded his arms over his chest. It probably looked terribly childish and ridiculous, but at that point he couldn't bring himself to care. "It's totally different. You… you don't get it, Bruce. It's a _part_ of me, okay? I can't just ditch it."

"Oh, I get it." Bruce could feel the beginnings of anger clenching in the center of his chest and the knots of frustration twisting their fingers into his stomach, and he hesitated for a moment to take a step back and force himself to push it away. "The Other Guy is a part of me too, you know. And he's not just some small chunk of metal I can get removed whenever I want. It took me _years_ to even begin to get a hold on him, and now that control I had, it's just – it's _gone._ This affects me too, Tony. Just as much as it affects you." He too found himself looking away, his fingers toying absently with the cuff of his sleeve. Whatever Tony was thinking at the moment resonated in a low grumble he felt in the back of his mind, and he focused most of his efforts on keeping it suppressed. Now was very much not the time.

Tony had opened his mouth to respond, but what was left of the logic in his mind urged him to hold his tongue for the moment. Of course it affected Bruce, he'd never doubted that it did (he _couldn't_ doubt it, actually, the evidence was way too obvious), but hearing him _say_ it, word it like Tony had completely disregarded the array of guilt and frustration and grief pent up inside his partner's head.. it felt like a punch in the gut, one that knocked the wind out of him and made his head spin with the realization of just how selfish he'd been. Nobody ever doubted that though, that Tony was as selfish as they come, and he finally found himself realizing why.

Well, at least _most_ people hadn't doubted it, but then again most people hadn't seen Tony at his worst. Most people hadn't given him a second chance after he'd royally screwed up, and most people definitely hadn't taken the gamble of actually _loving_ him when time and time again he'd shown them reasons why they shouldn't.

Tony bit his lip and lifted his gaze to Bruce, noticing how the man had turned his own eyes away as soon as he'd closed his mouth. He found himself almost hesitant to move, unsure if he should offer any sort of apologies or comfort at all, but something in Bruce's expression shut down that part of his mind and pressed him into still-tentative motion. He slumped back down against the bed and laid his head in his partner's lap, pushing his hands away from where they'd been resting. Bruce's body tensed just slightly out of surprise for a moment before Tony felt him relax and gently brush a hand over his hair, fingers tangling in the thick, brunet locks.

Bruce wasn't most people.

Bruce had never been most people, and that wasn't always completely attributed to his monstrously infamous alter-ego. Not to Tony, at least. To Tony, he'd always been the man who didn't simply dismiss his every word as careless wit, who actually laughed at his teasing and looked at him with such affection and endearment in his gaze that Tony sometimes found himself doubting that he was even worthy of being with such an incredible man. He'd been the person who'd given Tony chance after chance every time he needed one with barely so much as a blink of an eye, because Bruce _loved_ him, dammit, and Tony couldn't for the life of him realize why it had taken him so long to figure it out.

With a small sigh just barely escaping his lips, Tony tuned his mind back into the present. "I love you too, you know," he murmured, punctuating his words with as much confidence as he could manage; the sentiment was real, realer than most things in his life at the moment, but the genuine tenderness of his voice was still foreign to him. He couldn't see Bruce's face, but he could feel how the hand in his hair stilled for a moment before it tugged Tony's head back, turning his face towards Bruce's that was hovering over him.

When Tony looked up, the soft, elated smile that graced Bruce's lips was one of the last things he'd expected to find that day. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing Tony had seen in weeks, even months. Even the tiniest glint of doubt that Tony couldn't help but notice in Bruce's eyes every time he reassured him of a similar sentiment seemed to have vanished, replaced by something more genuine that managed to let even Tony momentarily forget about the dilemmas looming over them.

"You mean that?" Bruce asked softly, just the slightest twinge of doubt in his words. Of course, Tony thought, of course he would doubt it, just because he was _Bruce_ and there were few things in the world that he _didn't_ doubt. But the smile that stayed steady on his face and the way his thumb grazed gently over Tony's cheekbone made it pretty obvious that whatever hesitation he had was slim, prompting Tony to pull himself back up to sit and face the man beside him.

"I mean it," Tony replied confidently, locking his gaze on Bruce's still careworn brown eyes. "Seriously. I mean, I know I've been being stupid lately, and that's totally not an excuse for anything, but… this whole thing isn't about me. I know that. I should have –" He would have gone on if it wasn't for Bruce's lips crashing into his, silencing whatever further words or apologies he would have tried to make. A small, somewhat surprised noise left Tony's throat in response before he leaned into it, settling a hand on Bruce's waist while he let the much-missed warmth and ecstasy from the simple embrace seep through him.

It was a few more moments until Bruce pulled away, letting his hand stay settled on the back of Tony's neck while he rested their foreheads against one another. "You don't need to explain it," he assured the other man softly, "I understand. It's your choice, okay? I shouldn't guilt you into it just because I'm a little inconvenienced."

"Inconvenienced," Tony repeated with a soft, near humorless chuckle. Typical Banner, playing down his obvious suffering as if it were any old problem with an easy fix. "It's a little more than _inconvenienced,_ Bruce."

"Okay, a little more than that," Bruce agreed, unable to help the small smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"A _lot_ more."

"Fine, a lot more." Bruce almost rolled his eyes at Tony's stubbornness. "Still. I don't want you to make a snap decision and just do something because of me. You have to want it, too."

"Who said I was doing anything for you?" Tony replied, his voice tainted with a mocking hint of skepticism before he saw the way Bruce's brow furrowed and he pulled a smile onto his lips. "Kidding, babe. Kidding," he added, chuckling softly. "Really, though. I know I have to want it, but you just said a few minutes ago that it affects you just as much as it affects me. And I… you know, I can't be so selfish anymore if this is gonna work."

Bruce had sat back against the headboard while Tony talked, examining his words and how they fit with Tony's typical persona, ending up a little surprised when it didn't seem to add up. "How mature of you," he teased lightly, "acting like an emotionally responsible grown-up. I'm proud." He grinned jokingly, carding his fingers through the hair on the back of Tony's head.

Tony shifted so he was closer to his partner, extending an arm over Bruce's torso to place his hand on the bed and prop himself up. "Well," he said quietly, leaning his face in a little closer, "we both said our _I love you_ 's, so I guess that means we're in it for the long run, right? I kind of have to grow up a bit. But don't get too excited, I might still need you to hold my hand when we cross the street." He mirrored the smile on Bruce's face for a moment before pressing in to wipe it away with a slow, lazy kiss, both of them going silent for the next few moments apart from the faint sounds that came from the mingling of their lips. "Also," Tony murmured once he'd pulled away for a second, "remind me to find my phone later, I need to make an appointment."

"What for?" Bruce asked, eyes closed and voice just the slightest bit breathless.

Tony's answer involved both his mouth and Bruce's, but was entirely non-verbal. He pressed forward into the other man's close embrace as he let his mind shut off and enjoy the intimate normalcy of the moment, hoping that Bruce would do the same.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, the penultimate chapter. This is both exciting and saddening, cause man, I feel like this story's been with me for so long (well, it kinda has. Heh.) and seeing it end soon is a bit strange. But regardless, I want to thank you all for staying with me and this fic for so long, and for your continued support. I wouldn't have made it this far without you guys. So here's an update for you, and the next one will be the last.

Sometime the next morning, Bruce awoke to the traces of morning sunlight that somehow made it through the messily-drawn curtains. He groaned quietly, throwing an arm over his eyes to block it out. _Too early for this,_ he thought, _too tired._

"Tony?" he muttered, not bothering to open his eyes since the bed was still warm beside him. There wasn't an answer, and Bruce sighed. Tony was probably still tired, however Bruce had never really seen anyone be _that_ exhausted after a great night of sex, regardless of how phenomenal it had been in spite of how slow they'd had to take it to accommodate their… _situation_.

Bruce paused to chuckle softly at that. Well, he could cut Tony some slack, because at least he had a good reason to be so tired (it _was_ pretty phenomenal).

His movements were anything but graceful as he shifted onto his side, letting his arm flop down on Tony's side of the bed since he figured he'd find his boyfriend's body still sprawled across the sheets. When all he felt was a warm yet empty space, Bruce's eyes flew open on instinct, whatever warmth and contentment that had been settled in his chest replaced by a heavy chill as he thought, _shit, not this again._

_"Tony?"_

Bruce couldn't help the instinctual concern and fear that immediately washed over him, and it only took him less than ten seconds to scramble out of the bed and pull a sheet around his waist (he was sure his pants were somewhere, but dammit, he didn't have the _time,_ not now). His heart was pounding in his chest and he tried his best to push away the almost nauseating worry that he'd have to go through this _again,_ but the usually quiet presence of the Other Guy in the back of his mind clawed its way to the front and made his efforts nearly impossible. The tower seemed mostly quiet as he padded through the hallways, forcing himself to focus on the little, mundane noises he heard every now and then to drown out the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.

It was a few more seconds until he rounded a corner into the kitchen and could hear the whirs of the coffee maker and the soft murmurs of Tony's voice, and his worries were finally put to rest. Bruce let out a small huff of relief, pausing for a moment to stare at the somewhat tense lines of Tony's back before walking towards him.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, stopping a couple inches away from where Tony was leaning against the counter. Tony glanced over at the man beside him, muttering a brief 'thanks' into the phone at his ear before clicking it off and setting it down.

"Making a phone call," the engineer replied, and Bruce almost rolled his eyes. _Well, obviously._ "What are you doing out here with no pants on?" he asked in return, sending an amused glance down at the sheet that Bruce had clenched around his waist.

Bruce exhaled a small sigh, not quite able to help the traces of a smile that tugged at the corners of his lips. "I woke up and you were gone, and it scared the hell out of me given what happened last time I woke up and you weren't next to me in the morning. I didn't really have time for pants."

Taking a step forward, Tony returned the smile as he slid his arms around Bruce's waist, pulling the other man's bare chest against his shirted one. "Sorry," he responded, dragging his fingers along Bruce's lower back. "You were pretty knocked out, I didn't want to wake you up."

"You could have woken me up, I wouldn't have cared," Bruce said, sliding one of his hands up along Tony's arm. "Just… don't do that again, okay? Not while this whole thing is still going on."

Tony took a moment to search Bruce's eyes, finding the small traces of concern still glistening behind his irises. A wave of guilt washed over him for having worried his boyfriend, because, yeah, it had been pretty stupid of him to just get up and walk out after what had happened last time, and the last thing he wanted to do was scare Bruce into thinking that they'd have to experience the same thing all over again, as if the first time wasn't already terrible enough. He blinked and forced the thoughts away, replacing them with a smile instead. "I won't," he promised, leaning his head forward to nudge Bruce's face towards his and kiss him softly.

Bruce managed to let his worries melt away as Tony kissed him, the gentle pressure of his partner's lips on his own forcing away the rather demanding presence of the Other Guy and letting him relax as his hands slid up to rest lightly on the mechanic's shoulders. The embrace only lasted a couple more seconds until they had to pull away, eyes still closed and just slightly breathless. They were both silent for the next few passing moments, breathing in each other's air until Bruce sighed lightly and ran his tongue over his lips, still able to taste the traces of coffee that Tony had been drinking before. "So what was that phone call you tried to hide from me?" he asked, his tone teasing despite his genuine curiosity.

"I wasn't trying to hide it," Tony replied, and the speed of his response allowed Bruce to detect just the slightest hint of defensiveness in his voice. "I just woke up and it came to mind. I didn't want to forget about it."

"Then what was it?" Bruce knew he was being particularly annoying and prying a little more than he needed to, but given the events of the past several weeks, he didn't want to feel as if Tony was hiding anything from him, even if he actually wasn't. "Surely it's important if you got up so early to get it done…"

Tony almost sighed, but stifled it at the last moment. "I needed to make a doctor's appointment," he responded, knowing that it would be wrong of him to keep it from Bruce especially considering their conversation the night before. He was going to leave it at that before he noticed the curious and somewhat apprehensive expression on his partner's face, so he continued, "for the arc reactor thing. Figured I should get it over and done with ASAP."

"Oh." Bruce glanced away for a moment, not having expecting that particular answer. "Already?" he asked, bringing his gaze back up to look at Tony, who still seemed reasonably nonchalant about the whole thing as he nodded. "You don't have to do it so soon, you know, if you want more time to…" Bruce let his sentence trail off weakly as he noticed the way Tony was still looking at him, and he cleared his throat. "Never mind. When's the appointment?"

"I made one for Friday, since they apparently need to do some tests and check stuff out first or whatever, make sure everything's ticking right before they go cutting me open," Tony replied, and Bruce held back a sympathetic wince at the thought. "So if all goes well, I'll probably have the actual surgery sometime next week."

Bruce took in the information in silence, just managing a slight nod as he thought. It all suddenly seemed very real, even though it had _always_ been real – but five minutes ago, the thought of Tony actually _doing_ this and going through with the operation was just a mere idea that Bruce had honestly thought could wait a little while longer. But now it was actually _happening_ , it was real, and it was honestly a little terrifying even for Bruce, who knew that he should have been the last person here to be scared. "Okay," he said softly, rubbing his hand absently along Tony's shoulder. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"To the appointment or the surgery?" Tony asked, leaning his hip against the counter as he curled one hand around Bruce's on his shoulder, leaving the other at his waist.

"The appointment." Bruce let a small smile slide onto his lips despite his unnecessary worries, squeezing Tony's hand. "I'll be there for the surgery whether you want me to or not."

Tony paused for a second to consider before he nodded. "You can come if you want, I guess," he replied with half a shrug, "I mean, it's really not _that_ important, more of a precautionary thing."

"No, it _is_ important." Before Tony could respond, Bruce tilted his head upwards to brush a quick kiss across his partner's lips, able to feel the slight tension in Tony's body that he tried to hide beneath his typical nonchalance. "This is a big thing for you, okay? I'll be there."

"Sure," Tony replied after a beat of hesitation, his fingers absently dancing along Bruce's side. "You'll probably be super bored, but –"

"Moral support, Tony."

After the rather pointed glance Bruce gave him, Tony decided to just drop it. Bruce would be there one way or another, and normally Tony would have protested it to no end (and probably no avail) but he supposed he had to admit he was just a little worried about going alone, though he'd never let anybody know it. "Fine," he surrendered, pushing the thoughts and the conversation out of his mind for the time being. "But, you know… I can think of other ways for you to morally support me," he murmured, leaning forward and tilting his head to nibble gently at the shell of Bruce's ear.

Bruce let his lips curl into a smile, his eyes dropping halfway closed as he involuntarily shuffled closer to the warmth of Tony's body. "And what ways are those?" he asked, making a failed attempt at keeping his voice steady.

"I don't know," Tony hummed, unable to help the slight grin that drew across his mouth in response to the shakiness of Bruce's voice. He'd never get over how satisfyingly easy it was to make the scientist melt in his arms. "You tell me." He made rather slow work of sliding his hand down Bruce's side and angling it towards his front, his fingers dipping swiftly beneath the sheet wrapped around his boyfriend's waist. Bruce's breath hitched in his throat at the light, just shy of teasing touches, and his fingers curled into the hair at the nape of Tony's neck.

"Tony," Bruce managed to get out, not quite sure if he was trying to get the man's attention or if it was just a reflex response to the fingers that brushed dangerously close to his groin. "In the kitchen, really?" he asked, laughing slightly and breathlessly.

"Maybe I could have waited until we got back to our room if you were wearing more than a sheet," Tony replied, his voice low and husky against Bruce's ear. "But honestly, Bruce," he breathed, giving his partner's thigh a squeeze and earning a small, surprised squeak in response, "I've really stopped caring."

The words sent shivers down Bruce's spine, and he swallowed down another soft groan as he pulled his head back to see Tony's face. What he found there only prompted another smile to tug at his lips and he lifted his other arm to wrap around Tony's neck, letting the sheet loosen around his waist as he murmured a brief "me too" before pulling his partner back in for a kiss.

 

**# #**

"You're sure you have everything you need?"

"Positive."

"You don't want me to get you anything?"

"No, I'm okay."

"Nothing to eat or drink or anything? Are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah. I'm not gonna be in here for that much longer, Bruce. I'm A-Okay _._ "

"Okay, okay. Yeah. I know, sorry. You're comfortable, right?"

"Babe, I'm _fine._ " Tony found Bruce's hand with his own, lacing their fingers and giving it a gentle, hopefully reassuring squeeze. "You don't need to worry so much. Really." He tugged gently on Bruce's hand, urging the man to look at him as he forced a smile onto his lips.

Bruce sighed rather heavily, running a hand over his face until he felt the warmth of Tony's fingers wrap around his own. He lowered himself into the chair beside the bed as he looked over at the other man, trying to ignore how the eerily sterile white of the hospital sheets made him seem so much more pale and sickly than he actually was. The thin gown he wore loosely around his body and the steady beeping of the heart monitor in the background weren't exactly helping, either. "I know," he said again, dropping his hand from his face and giving Tony a rather tense smile in return. "I'm just a little nervous, I suppose."

"Little?" Tony teased, and the only response he got from Bruce was an exasperated yet affectionate bump in the arm. "I think that's a bit of an understatement." He said the words with a small, amused smile, but underneath it he had to admit that some of Bruce's worry had spilled over into his own. By all means, though, he probably should have been more worried than he actually was at that point – and he was sure he would be once the whole thing properly sank in. It still hadn't really, despite that he was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to various machines as he waited for another nurse to come in and prep him at some point while his boyfriend was nearly sick with worry beside him.

And it would catch up to him, he was sure. Just not now, not when he had to at least _try_ to be the strong one after everything he'd put Bruce through recently.

But the more he thought about it, the harder it became to actually _be_ the strong one in the situation, and the quicker the realization of the reality of the situation came crashing into him. Tony had never liked hospitals (and evidently, neither did Bruce), absolutely loathed them actually, and it became increasingly difficult to ignore the thought of how, probably within the hour, he'd be knocked out on some metal table with a team of doctors sticking their hands in his chest, poking and prodding and plucking away at his artificial lifeline, the one thing that had stayed constant throughout the past several years when everything else had been uprooted.

 _Not helping, Stark,_ he thought with a sigh, _really not helping._

"It's probably going to be a while, Bruce," Tony said softly, turning his head to look over at the man beside him. Bruce looked up at the words, squeezing absently on Tony's hand. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to." He knew that Bruce was going to deny his offer, and it wasn't that he didn't want Bruce there – he did, he _needed_ Bruce to be there, really – he just needed time to think, and it wasn't likely he'd be able to do that without worrying his partner even further.

"No, I'll stay." Of course. "I'm not just going to leave you here alone, Tony."

"I know," Tony murmured in response, tugging Bruce's hand into his lap to toy with his fingers, hoping it would serve as some sort of distraction. "I just know how much you don't like hospitals." A small, somewhat fake smile slid onto his lips as he let his head drop back against the stiff pillows, his eyes sliding mostly closed. He figured he could at least try to give off the illusion that he was tired, just to pretend that he wasn't worrying.

"Nobody likes hospitals, Tony." Bruce's voice was quiet, soothing, with just a twinge of involuntary concern. Tony felt the warmth of the physicist's hand brush over his hair, followed by a gentle press of Bruce's lips to his forehead that prompted the smile on his lips to become a bit more genuine. "But I'm staying here, whether you want me to or not."

Tony hummed softly in agreement, trying to ignore the uneasiness rising in his gut that he would have hated to call fear. His ears zeroed in on the ticks of the clock in the distance, knowing that with each second he was getting closer to being put under and wheeled into that room only to have one of the most vital components of his identity stripped from him and tossed away like it had never mattered. Just the thought of that made his jaw clench and his mind spiral into uncertainty, so he tried to push it away and focus on the soothing passes of Bruce's hand through his hair. It was the right choice, it had to be. Because Tony wasn't just doing this for _himself,_ he was doing it for Bruce, who needed this far more than Tony did if he was going to admit it. It felt strange, thinking of it as such a selfless act when only a year ago he wouldn't have thought twice about refusing something that wasn't likely to benefit him.

But Bruce needed this, and Tony _loved_ Bruce, certainly more than he loved himself.

Still, though, that didn't make it any easier or any less terrifying. The warmth of Bruce's body beside him did little to calm his nerves, and he felt his heart nearly skip a beat when the door opened opposite the bed. Tony cracked his eyes open to see a nurse enter the room, accompanied by an IV that no doubt was for the anesthetic. Well, there wasn't any backing out now.

Tony was sure at least half the hospital could hear his heart pounding substantially faster in his chest, and he was pretty sure he heard the nurse say something as she approached him. Whatever she had said went in one ear and out the other as he gripped Bruce's hand and turned his head to face him, swallowing nervously.

"What am I doing, Bruce?" Tony asked softly, his voice just slightly frantic. "Why am I- what – is this the right thing?"

Bruce gave Tony's hand a reassuring squeeze, or at least as much as he could considering the iron grip the man had around his fingers. "You're doing the right thing," he reassured the engineer, lifting their joined hands to brush a kiss across Tony's knuckles. "It's going to be worth it in the end, alright? We won't have to worry about it anymore. It's the right thing, I promise. Now the nurse needs you to give her your arm."

"I know, but what if something doesn't go right, or what if I end up needing it for something –"

"Tony? Look at me." Bruce managed to untangle his fingers from Tony's, lifting his hand and setting it on the side of the man's face. He made sure that Tony was looking straight at him before he smiled encouragingly, hoping that it at least soothed Tony's nerves a little bit since it didn't do very much to calm his own. "I know this is a big thing for you, and I know you're worried, but… we'll make it work, however it goes. It's going to be okay." He gently ran his thumb over Tony's cheek before shifting forward a little, wrapping his arms around the man as best he could and pressing his partner's head against his shoulder. Tony was tense in his arms and he muttered a few more soft encouragements until he noticed the nurse looking at him expectantly, nodding in acknowledgement and lifting Tony's arm to nudge it towards her.

Tony barely felt the pinch of the needle as it slid into his arm, but the effects of the anesthetic began to flow through his body almost instantly. A dull tingling sensation spread through his limbs and he felt himself going numb beneath Bruce's arms, whatever his boyfriend had been saying quickly disintegrating into a jumbled soup of words in his brain, and he couldn't help but succumb to the tiresome sensation as he thought, _yeah… it'll be fine._

When he felt Tony begin to limp beneath him, Bruce reluctantly pulled away from the bed. "I'll be here when you wake up," he murmured, even though he was mostly sure that Tony wouldn't hear him. He tried to let the peaceful expression on Tony's face enforce the truth of his words before, convincing him that, yeah, everything would be fine when all this was over, because it _would_ be. It had to be – Tony wasn't sick, but then again, neither of them were completely sure that the absence of the arc reactor would actually solve their problem.

Regardless, it didn't stop Bruce from worrying as he followed Tony's bed as far as the nurse would let him, holding tight to his partner's hand until he absolutely had to let go. Even though he knew Tony wouldn't hear it, Bruce murmured a soft _'I love you'_ before he watched Tony disappear behind metal doors, knowing that he'd return a changed man.


	20. Chapter Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, it's finally done (well, I wanted it to be done like three months ago, but still).
> 
> I just want to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to everyone who's stuck with this fic, whether you've been here since the beginning or just jumped in whenever. I know it's been a bumpy ride, and I really can't thank you all enough for your continued love and support. It's so wonderful to know that there are other people out there who love these characters just as much as I do, and I certainly couldn't have done this without all of you wonderful people out there. So that being said, here's the final chapter… and as always, I hope you all enjoy it! Thank you!

_Tick, tick, tick…_

Five hours. Five painstakingly long, drawn-out hours, hours that felt more like years, since Tony had disappeared behind metal doors and left Bruce waiting on the other side. Five hours since Tony had finalized his decision to uproot a key part of his existence, for _Bruce_ nonetheless, and there wasn't any going back now.

_Tick_

He'd be fine.

_Tick_

He had to be.

Bruce heaved a sigh, pulling himself to his feet and pacing back and forth a few yards for the umpteenth time that day. He really shouldn't have been as worried as he was. It wasn't like it was a life-threatening procedure, if anything it was rather simple if it was done right. Remove the arc reactor, extract the shrapnel, sew him up, done. At least that was the simplified version, but that's how Bruce was trying to think – simple. There was any number of things that could go wrong if he overthought it; chest tissue could end up damaged, his heart could malfunction, the radiation could spread even more than it already had. Too many things, Bruce thought dismally, too many things that had potential to end up terribly, and too many things he really didn't want or need to think about, especially not now. The doctors knew what they were doing, or so he hoped.

The physicist lowered himself into the rickety waiting room chair again, reaching for his cup of coffee on the short table beside him. He needed to stop worrying. The constant concern that drifted through his brain, filling up all the cracks and gaps like smoke, was beginning to ebb away at his sanity, but with any luck Tony would be out soon and Bruce would deflate with a long sigh of relief.

"What cup of coffee are you on now?" Bruce looked up as he heard Pepper's voice and the approaching click of her heels. She looked almost as concerned as he did, in the discreet, practiced way that they were both far too skilled at. But at the very least Bruce was grateful that he didn't have to sit there alone.

"Not sure," Bruce responded blandly, his eyes tracing the outline of the top of his coffee cup. He looked back up when he heard Pepper sit down in the chair beside him, giving her a somewhat humorless smile. "I could say the same for you," he commented, glancing pointedly at the cup in her hand.

Pepper returned the gesture, a little more successful than Bruce's (probably because, unlike him, she'd lived much of her life in front of the public and was skilled at faking a smile) before checking her phone for the time. "Nothing out of the ordinary," she sighed lightly, leaning back against the old chair. "I take it you haven't heard anything new?"

"It's been five minutes since you left, Pepper."

"News happens fast." She shrugged. "It's just been a while, I'm a little curious." Bruce watched her run a hand through her hair almost impatiently, but he supposed he couldn't blame her for being so concerned and maybe even a little irritated if he wasn't any different.

"Yeah, get in line," he muttered, aiming for a somewhat humorous tone but giving it up when it came out more bittersweet than anything. Pepper just simply smiled lightly and nodded, taking a distracted sip of her coffee.

"Will do," she replied, giving the scientist another brief glance. Her gaze ended up lingering on him for a bit longer than she'd intended, and she was suddenly very grateful that Bruce wasn't looking at her since her expression had no doubt turned into something a bit too thoughtful and nostalgic to possibly be neutral. Whatever Bruce and Tony had between them was very clearly something that she never could or would have had with Tony herself, and while part of her would always be hurting over that, she couldn't deny that she felt almost… indebted to Bruce, in a way. Because he made Tony _happy,_ happier than Pepper had ever seen him, and Tony made him happy, too. Hell, most of the reason for Tony's current stint in the hospital was to make Bruce happy again, and Pepper couldn't help the overwhelming sense of gratitude that filled her. She'd been hoping, maybe a bit too selfishly, that Tony would separate himself from the arc reactor at some point. And she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to thank Bruce enough for getting him there. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to him, you know," she said softly, not even realizing she'd said it before the words were out in the open.

Bruce looked back up at her, not having expected the confession. He'd been ready to brush it off with a shrug and a quick smile, thinking she'd just said it out of pity or sympathy for the two of them in their current situation like people usually did, but then he noticed the expression she wore and was struck speechless for a few moments. The sincerity in her eyes stunned him into acceptance, and he force himself to give her a small, shy nod. "He's the best thing that's happened to me too," he admitted, feeling almost sheepish until Pepper gave him a knowing smile, one that he found he was actually able to return. She mouthed a faint ' _I know'_ and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, letting them both lapse back into silence.

After so long of keeping track before, both of them seemed to give up on watching the clock for the next coming moments. It could have been a few minutes, hours, or even days for all Bruce knew, and he was sure that he'd been in a daze for most of it until another voice interrupted his maze of thoughts.

"Dr. Banner, Ms. Potts?"

Bruce hadn't taken much notice of Tony's doctor when they'd arrived, but he was decently sure that the man in front of them was the one. He felt Pepper's hand close around his wrist, her nails digging into his skin, and there wasn't any doubt of how worried she (both of them, really) was about what the doctor might say next.

"I'd like to inform you that Mr. Stark is out of surgery," the doctor continued, seeing both of them visibly relax. "He's fully stable and back in his room."

Bruce didn't waste any time once the words had processed in his brain. "Can we see him?" he asked immediately, shifting slightly in his seat to prepare himself to stand up.

There was a brief beat of hesitation from the doctor, and Bruce noticed a small frown draw across his face. _Please_ , Bruce thought, _we're all he has._

"You're not family, so under hospital protocol I shouldn't allow you to," the doctor explained, slowly as if in thought, before he stifled a light sigh. "But I suppose I can make an exception."

The large exhale of relief in the area was almost tangible. Pepper's fingers loosened around Bruce's wrist, and she pulled her hand away with a brief apologetic glance in his direction. "Thank you," she said, pulling herself to her feet just seconds before Bruce did the same. Bruce nodded his agreement, following the doctor down the corridor as they started walking.

As soon as they entered the room, Bruce wasted no time rushing to Tony's bedside, doing his best to ignore what seemed like dozens of wires and monitors that were attached to him. The doctor was talking quietly behind him, something about soreness and pain medication, but Bruce unintentionally tuned it out in favor of taking Tony's limp hand, the rest of him pale and motionless against the bed sheets.

When the doctor left, Pepper's footsteps approached the bed and she stopped beside the scientist, following his gaze as it swept over Tony's body. "The doctor said everything's fine," she informed him softly, "just that he'll be sore for a few days once he wakes up."

"I'm sure," Bruce replied, his voice sounding distant and somewhat distracted. Tony's chest was covered in a thick layer of dressings that would have stifled the glow of the reactor to begin with, but even so, Bruce couldn't help the overwhelming sense of discomfort that washed over him. Getting used to seeing Tony without his signature circle of light would be a difficult task for sure.

Pepper took the chair beside him, her hand resting lightly on Tony's leg. "So it's gone, huh?" she asked, and Bruce noticed that her eyes were fixed on just the same place.

"Yeah," Bruce sighed, sounding just a hair unsure still, "it's gone."

Neither of them said anything further, just surrendered themselves to the heavy silence that was disturbed only by the slow, thankfully steady blips of the heart monitor. Bruce couldn't quite decide what he was feeling at the moment - somewhere between relieved (that Tony was okay), guilty (for, what he at least felt was, pushing Tony into this), and worried (that Tony wouldn't be able to adjust to life without it). He tried to push the emotions out of his mind and focus on the beat of Tony's heart or the slight hesitations in Pepper's breaths beside him, and it worked up to a point, distracting him just enough to not drive himself too insane before he noticed Tony stirring just slightly.

The next few moments felt some kind of bittersweet, the whole scene feeling far too familiar to only a few weeks earlier for Bruce to be completely confident and comfortable. Tony was no doubt much better off this time, with so much less room for complications or unexpected consequences, but that didn't stop the endless montage of things that could have went wrong from flashing through Bruce's mind until he saw Tony's eyes finally flutter open, Pepper's presence momentarily forgotten. He gripped the engineer's hand tighter in his own, letting the feeling of the rough, calloused skin of Tony's fingers sliding over his own act as a form of comfort until Bruce was sure that his partner was actually awake.

"Hey," Bruce said gently, the first genuine smile of that day twisting the corners of his mouth. "Welcome back." He gave Tony a few minutes to adjust, knowing how disorienting it could be to wake up from anesthetic; it was more or less how he felt every time he woke up from a transformation.

Tony grumbled softly as he let his eyes adjust, squinting a little despite the dim light of the room, and Bruce did his best to school his expression into something more neutral. If he looked too relieved, then Tony would no doubt figure out how unnecessarily worried Bruce had been, and that was quite frankly the last thing he wanted at that point. Once he seemed to remember where he was, Tony sighed and let his gaze wander a little absently until it settled on Bruce. "Did it work?" he asked quietly, and Bruce couldn't help but smile at the inquiry. Knocked out for hours and still somewhat disoriented with sedatives, and of course _that's_ the first thing he asks.

"It's a bit too early to know yet," Bruce replied with a quiet, fond chuckle, one that was even genuine. "We need to let you heal up first, then we'll find out."

Tony seemed to have heard the response, but if he'd actually acknowledged it he didn't show it. "It feels weird," he continued, his voice slightly distant. Maybe he was a little more delirious than Bruce had thought.

"What, not having the reactor anymore?" Bruce asked, just to be sure.

"Yeah. It's different."

Bruce smiled a little at that. "Yeah?" he replied, lowering his voice to a gentle murmur and scooting a little closer to Tony's bed. "Well," he paused, giving Tony's somewhat limp hand a squeeze before lifting it up to brush a kiss over his knuckles, "hopefully a lot of things will be different now."

**# #**

Bruce had decided to give Tony some time to heal and adjust to his new and hopefully improved condition before finding out if said condition was actually successful. He was sure that the adjustment would be difficult no matter how much Tony denied it ("seriously, Bruce, I've lived a good chunk of my life without that thing anyway"), and to be honest, Bruce didn't quite know _how_ they were going to test anything to even reach a conclusion in the first place (excluding Tony's rather single-minded suggestion, "can't we just have sex now?")

Regardless, Bruce was pleased to finally be back home at the tower, inhaling the typical mixed scents of motor oil and cologne when he was wrapped in his boyfriend's arms rather than the almost nauseating bleach and disinfectant of the hospital. Tony just seemed excited to be back in his workshop again, tinkering with metal contraptions and chattering at Jarvis with the occasional visit from Bruce. And that was exactly where Bruce found him that day, hunched over some hunk of metal that was apparently a car engine, his forearms coated in grease and the back of his sleeveless top riding up just slightly around the bottom, exposing the skin of his lower back in the way that somehow always managed to get Bruce all hot and bothered.

"Back already?" Tony asked amusedly, not turning away from his work but clearly sensing Bruce's presence behind him.

"Yes," Bruce said, giving his boyfriend a slight smile even though the man wasn't looking at him. "I had to run up to a quick meeting with Fury. I took care of everything, just so you know. Explained the situation and how we dealt with it, assured him that everything's going to be fine… he was a little wary about you removing the arc reactor, but ultimately he put us back on the team," he explained. Tony probably would have liked to be there, but Bruce had figured that it would be easier with less chance of conflict if he was the only one to meet with the Director. "I made sure to come back here as soon as I was done."

"Back on the dream team, just what I've always wanted," Tony muttered, his quiet mumbles dripping with snark and sarcasm until he listened to Bruce's latter remark. "Miss me that much, huh?" he teased.

"You could say that," Bruce replied, taking a few casual steps towards his boyfriend.

Tony looked up from whatever he'd been hunched over, grabbing a towel to wipe away any excess engine grease from his hands as he turned around to look at Bruce. "Something bothering you, hon?" he asked, his gaze that had been so bright and content for the past couple days turning suddenly concerned. "You look tense."

Bruce had placed his hands in his pockets while Tony had been talking to him, and he gave a small shrug in response. "Just fine," he replied, letting Tony walk forward and wrap his arms around his waist to pull them closer. Bruce in turn rested his hands on Tony's shoulders, meeting his partner's eyes for a moment before his gaze dropped to the other man's chest. It still looked strange without the small, familiar circle of light in the center, far stranger than Bruce had ever expected it to look, and Bruce found himself questioning if he would ever properly get used to it. "Actually," he started again, eyes wandering from Tony's chest to the space on another counter where he'd been storing the arc reactor since it'd been removed. No time like the present, he figured. "I wanted to tell you that I, um… I disposed of the reactor," he said quietly, shrugging again and trying not to look too guilty.

Tony seemed to be somewhere between confused and taken aback at Bruce's words, his eyebrows raised and his hands looser around Bruce's waist. "You disposed – you… what?"

"I had to," Bruce replied, feeling the change in Tony's grip around his waist and noticing a quick flash of what looked like panic in his eyes. "It – there was radiation still left in it, Tony, it would have been dangerous to keep it around here for too much longer. And I wasn't going to let you handle it, you've been exposed to a lot more than I would like already," he explained, hoping that he'd get through Tony's thick skull and help him see some reason… at least for the time being.

"And you didn't think to actually _ask me_ before you did that?" Tony retorted, his hands dropping from Bruce's hips completely. Bruce searched his gaze for a few seconds, finding that what was previously a flash of confusion before had turned into something of a glint of anger or frustration or betrayal, and he suddenly wondered if he was making the right decision here.

"You wouldn't have let me if I'd asked you about it," Bruce replied, folding his arms over his chest since he wasn't quite sure what else to do with them at the moment. "You would have just gotten angry with me, and I wanted to avoid –"

"And I'm not angry now?" Tony huffed out a frustrated sigh, turning away from Bruce and bunching his fingers in his hair. He could feel himself getting angrier by the second, and had he not been so preoccupied he probably would have wondered if Bruce could feel it as well. "Dammit, Bruce, I thought you were smarter than this! If I actually cared about danger and radiation and all that bullshit then I wouldn't be with you, would I?"

Bruce almost flinched. That stung. "Tony -"

"No," Tony snapped, swiveling back towards the other man. "No, stop, don't try to explain it. Doing that – that wasn't your place, wasn't your decision, that was a _part_ of me. It was a reminder _._ That's why I kept it for all that time, why I dealt with all that metal constantly cutting and crushing into my chest for all those years. A _reminder._ Not because of the suits or tech or whatever, I needed it and wanted to keep it to remind me of all that shit I've been through, keep me in check, remember what I had to do to even _get_ here, and now…" He paused, scrubbing a hand over his face before dropping it hopelessly to his side. "It's gone. You threw that away, Bruce. Without even _asking me."_

Bruce was reasonably sure that he'd never heard Tony sound as hurt as he did right then. A stab of pain hit him straight in the center of his chest at the tone of his boyfriend's voice, like a blade slicing in half that little compartment in his heart where Tony always was and always would be, and Bruce suddenly regretted doing this the way he had.

But then something clicked in Bruce's brain, and it was only a split second more before he realized that those feelings of regret and guilt were the _only_ things was feeling. Tony was very obviously upset and angry, or frustrated at the very least, and Bruce… he wasn't feeling a thing. Nothing apart from his own emotions at least, and he couldn't help the small smile that started to spread across his lips as he looked back at Tony.

Tony had looked away while Bruce seemed to have an internal discussion with himself, pushing his fingers through his hair before he felt Bruce's gaze on him. "What are you grinning at?" he asked, his tone unintentionally yet justifiably bitter.

"It worked," Bruce answered simply after a moment of stunned silence, unable to wipe the smile off his face now that it was there. "You're angry and I'm not feeling it. Tony, it _worked._ "

Bruce didn't know how he'd expected Tony to react, but he thought that there would at least some traces of relief or joy or something of the sort. Apparently not. "Yeah, great, it worked," the engineer shot back caustically, "is that why you suddenly decided to toss it?"

A small sigh escaped Bruce's lungs before he had the chance to stop it. This really wasn't going how he wanted it to at all, but he supposed that he probably could have handled the whole situation better in the first place. "Tony," he started softly as he took a step forward to brush a hand over his boyfriend's arm, and the flinch Tony gave in response actually felt like a physical stab in the gut. "Tony, love, come down to my lab with me, please?"

"Why the hell should I do that?"

"Just come with me. Please."

There were a few moments of awkward hesitance between the two of them before Tony finally agreed with a curt nod. Bruce felt a small wave of relief wash over him at Tony's agreement, and he almost reached over to take his partner's hand but decided against it at the last moment. Tony was still very clearly on edge, and Bruce really didn't want to push his luck. He glanced back at Tony every few moments as they walked just to make sure that the man was still with him, hating that he felt the need to do so, but he'd quite honestly never seen Tony be that angry with him before and he sincerely hoped that he hadn't done too much damage and that whatever he had done would be forgiven… but Bruce being Bruce, he couldn't help the inevitable thoughts of the worst.

_Dammit, Bruce, you could have done this without hurting him._

In retrospect, Bruce could have done a lot of things in the past several months without hurting Tony, or anyone else either, really. He couldn't deny that he'd been terribly selfish more times than he'd like to admit, and not only recently either – at least Bruce thought he'd been selfish, maybe in dragging Tony down with his emotional baggage or abandoning so many people across the globe who needed his help just to _be_ with Tony, just because he was _in love._

Well, love wasn't always such a selfless thing, he supposed. But it was worth it. _Tony_ was worth it.

Bruce tried to keep repeating that in his head like a mantra while he walked into his lab, trailed by Tony a couple feet behind him. He let the warm lights and familiar scents calm him as much as he could, padding quietly over to a cabinet towards the corner. Searching through it was probably more nerve-wracking than it should have been with Tony's gaze burning on his back, and Bruce deliberately took an extra few seconds to find what he was looking for just to buy himself some time to figure out how to explain. "Tony, I…" He took a breath, resting his hand on a small box on a shelf but not turning around just yet. "I lied to you." The words slipped off his tongue like acid, leaving a terrible taste in his mouth and something worse dripping through his brain. Part of him felt like it shouldn't have been so hard to say it, it wasn't a _huge,_ life-changing lie or anything, but he'd at least be arguing with himself for a while over why he even chose to do it this way.

"What is it now?" Tony asked bitterly, his arms folded over his chest in a way that would have shielded the light of the reactor had it still been there. "Something else about the Other Guy, something about us? Are you going back to one of those countries on the outskirts of fucking nowhere? Because you said you would stay."

"No," Bruce replied, and despite how hard he tried to keep his voice smooth, the small sigh was still audible in his tone. "I'm not leaving. I – I lied about the arc reactor." He didn't give Tony a chance to respond, making the snap decision to pull the box into his hands and turn back around before the other man could open his mouth. "Look," the scientist started again, leaning his shoulder against the cabinet and running the tips of his fingers absently over the rough cardboard in his hands, "this was stupid of me. Really stupid, not just a silly, ill-informed decision – really, really _stupid._ It's a sensitive subject for you, I know it is, and I should have respected that and found a different way to do this, but I knew that if you knew we were going to test it, your responses might not have been the same and the results may have been a little skewed in the positive and –" He shook the rambling away, telling himself that the logistics of the idea weren't relevant. "I lied when I told you that I disposed of the reactor to get you angry with me on purpose. I needed an honest response to see if removing it actually fixed the problem, or if I'd just screwed you over. So it's right here in this box, honest. I'm sorry, Tony." Bruce barely hesitated in handing the box over to Tony with one hand, glancing up at his boyfriend apologetically once he felt that the weight was transferred.

For a few moments, Tony didn't open the box. It just sat idly in his hands, the weight of the small device inside it dipping at the center. The engineer stared at it for a second before lifting his gaze to Bruce, the resigned expression on his boyfriend's face causing words to fail him. "You said you got rid of it because of the excess radiation," Tony finally said, his fingers tapping distractedly on the side of the cardboard.

"I know," Bruce responded dryly, "I told you, I lied about getting rid of it. That was my fake-reasoning."

"But there still has to be radiation in it anyway, I mean, you _injected_ it with _gamma_ –"

"Just open the box, Tony, please?"

Tony fell silent quickly. Bruce very rarely interrupted him like that (maybe because it was nearly impossible to for anyone who wasn't Pepper). "Alright," the inventor murmured, tugging open the top cardboard flaps of the box and expecting to find the slack, lifeless grey of the arc reactor when it wasn't illuminated with a bright blue beneath them. Instead, though, he actually found himself blinking away the light that blazed into his eyes when he looked right into it, the familiar teal shining around the edges and in the core of the device, but accented by three thick lines of luminescent green that formed a triangle in the center where each of the edges met. Tony just stared blankly at it for a while before he began to properly study the perfectly sculpted and blended colors, lifting his gaze to Bruce when he was mostly finished. "How did you do this?" he asked, voice somewhere between awestruck and incredulous. " _Why_ did you do this?"

Bruce just shrugged, not really looking at the other man. "It was already green in the center from the gamma radiation in my blood, so I found your instructions on how to synthesize Vibranium to fill in the rest. The coloring was strong enough to cancel out some of the green, not sure how, I might look into that at some point… anyway, there _is_ some radiation still left, that's what the extra glass casing is for. Not ideal, but it does the job well enough."

Tony nodded a little bit in acknowledgement, his eyes still set studiously on the circular device in the box. "Okay, but you didn't tell me _why_ ," he said after a moment of consideration, his gaze flicking to Bruce.

"I…" Bruce shifted awkwardly. He didn't quite know how to explain it, or if he even could. There wasn't any definitive reason why he'd done it anyway, not one that was totally _reasonable_ and not something that Tony would probably laugh off, at least. "I thought it was a nice sentiment," he finally settled for, figuring that was explanation enough.

"A nice sentiment," Tony repeated, nodding slowly. He couldn't help but notice how familiar that statement sounded.

"Yeah." Bruce hesitated for a second, debating on stepping closer to Tony and maybe taking his hand, but ultimately decided against it. Instead he just stayed where he was, his hands shoved in his pockets until Tony made any indication that he wanted him closer. "I guess I just… I thought of it as kind of a symbol, you know. The arc reactor was never really _just_ a device or _just_ something you made to keep you alive, was it?" It was generally a rhetorical question, but that's always what Bruce had thought. Maybe he was wrong, maybe it _was_ 'just an invention' to Tony that meant nothing more than one of his cars or robots, but Bruce doubted that, having some kind of instinctual feeling that the arc reactor meant more than Tony ever really let on. It wouldn't have been such an internal struggle for him to remove it if it didn't. "It was – _is_ – more of a reminder of how you've survived, I think. And now it has some of both of us in it. It shows how much we've _both_ survived all this, how much we've been through together. That's why I did it." Bruce shrugged, slightly unsure. The sentiment wasn't quite coming out exactly how he'd wanted it to, but he was fairly sure that Tony understood where he was coming from. "It sounds a little corny, I know," Bruce said quietly, a few moments later when Tony still hadn't spoken.

To Bruce's surprise, Tony actually chuckled at that. The sound was so unexpected that Bruce was almost startled, but after a split second he was so thrilled to hear the casual joy in Tony's laughter that a small smile of his own broke out across his face. "Yeah, that does sound really corny," Tony agreed, nodding a little bit as he glanced back down at the glow of the arc reactor. "Like, chick-flick corny." But however corny it may have sounded, Tony couldn't deny the swell of warmth he felt rise in his chest. Bruce had really put some thought into this, hadn't he? Well… Tony supposed that he had every right to, this was just as much Bruce's journey as it was Tony's. Everything that had happened, those past several months of utter hell, was something they both had shared, something that had ripped them both to pieces that only the other could help to patch up again.

Bruce was right. The reactor didn't belong to _just_ Tony anymore. It didn't belong to either of them, really, since it was sitting idle in that cardboard box, but it still bore the struggles of both of them within it. Its supposed power was nothing more than a mask.

It didn't take Tony very long to make the decision to set the box aside and step towards Bruce, ending up only inches from the other man. Bruce was still just standing there, looking more uncomfortable than Tony had seen him in a while, and it was that that made Tony hesitate just slightly before he brushed it off and leaned in to close the distance between their lips. One hand settled gently on Bruce's jaw and the other at his waist, tugging him close and kissing him long and hard under the fluorescent lights of the lab as if he hadn't kissed him in ages.

Bruce definitely couldn't say that he'd been expecting Tony to kiss him like that, but he made quick work of letting his thoughts disperse while his arms settled comfortably over Tony's shoulders. He couldn't quite pinpoint why this kiss felt so different than any other – maybe it was the circumstances, or the angle that Tony's lips were moving against his, or maybe just that for the first time in so, so long, everything felt like it was okay. For those few passing moments nothing else mattered, the arc reactor didn't exist and Tony had never had to take on the horrors of Bruce's 'terrible privilege' and the past few months had just never happened; for those few moments, they were just Tony and Bruce. Not Stark the billionaire engineer or Banner the brilliant physicist, just Tony and Bruce, two normal people with normal lives and a normal love that had never been twisted and tested and nearly broken.

 _Just_ Tony, and _just_ Bruce.

After a little while when they both seemed to be running out of air, Tony broke away from the kiss, slightly breathless. He rubbed his thumb over Bruce's cheek without opening his eyes, just savoring the very last drops of the moment. "You're something else, Bruce Banner," he murmured, keeping his arm tucked comfortably around Bruce's waist as if he'd never let go if he didn't have to. "You're really something else."

Bruce felt the beginnings of a sheepish smile tugging at his lips. Not really, he thought, he wasn't really anything different or special or extraordinary, at least not the parts of him that didn't turn big and green. He was just a person, no more or less capable of being broken or put back together than another – maybe not exactly a _normal_ person, but a person, and a better one at that since he'd managed to actually let himself find his other half. "I wouldn't really go that far," he replied softly, the slight smile breaking out across his face as he stayed contently pressed against Tony's warmth.

"I would," Tony replied easily, his eyes sliding back open to see the slight quirk of Bruce's lips. The sight prompted a fond smile to spread across his own face, and he took a few seconds to ponder how lucky he was to love such an incredible man and even be loved in return. "I mean, after all the shit that's happened, everything I've put you through with all this, the fact that you even still _want_ to be with me after that… that's… unbelievable." Tony paused, swallowing a little thickly. He was rarely so sentimental and he wasn't totally sure how to deal with the different feelings running through his brain and sending somehow satisfying shivers through his body, but there was a part of him that knew that it was worth it. _Bruce_ was worth it, and Tony felt the small, hesitant smile on his lips stretch into one of his signature stupid grins.

"Well, I don't every time get what I want," Bruce said simply after a moment, noticing the expression Tony wore and leaning in to kiss it off his face. "But… sometimes I get lucky."


End file.
